​Digital marketing is a discipline that already attracts more than it's fair share of snake oil salesmen. Resellers, middlemen, and pretenders abound (about 90% of SEO companies are resellers, by some counts), which leads to tons of broken promises and unfulfilled agreements. Within digital marketing as a whole is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO (go HERE to learn more about what SEO is and why it's valuable). Simply put, SEO is all about attracting people to your site by having 1) quality website construction and 2) quality, relevant content. If your site is up to par and has what a person is looking for, search engines like Google will be more likely to refer people to you.

SEO companies are often amateur, 1-man shows that are "side projects" at best, where the so-called "expert" claims to know the secret sauce needed for a #1 ranking, when in reality they have no idea how SEO works. What we want to accomplish in this post is to empower you with 11 things you can look for to know if your current or prospective SEO agency is full of it - a relationship doomed to fail.

1 - THEY PROMISE INSTANT RESULTS
The most common irresponsible claim of "SEO companies" is that they can get you to the top overnight. These companies are spamming the heck out of businesses trying to prey on owners that don't have an understanding about SEO. There are plenty of people out there who believe the hype and want to fast-track themselves to the top of the organic search rankings. Sure, there's bound to be some keywords that you could rank for relatively quickly, and your company name should rank #1 with a few things done right, but true SEO results take time. It's not uncommon for results to take months, if not years, to happen. It's a very naïve to think that you can have instant results, especially considering all of the variables that impact SEO. Don't fall prey to the false promise of a SEO agency promising you the world.

2 - THEY HAVE SPAMMY LINKS DIRECTED AT THEMSELVES
Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer, and other backlink analysis tools will help you evaluate an SEO company's site. Maybe 10% of SEO companies will have solid ratings that indicate they're good at what they do. The rest? Busch league. If an SEO company has no links or poor quality links, how could they help you?

3 - THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE SUCKS, OR IS NON-EXISTENT
Today, you have to be on social media in some way, and SEO agencies certainly need to have a strong presence there. It is a display of their ability to create quality content and engage with an audience. Your SEO agency needs to be able to do just that for you, so why work with them if they cannot do it for themself? An under-the-radar agency that avoids social media isn't looking for legitimacy or long-term impact, it's looking to make quick money and sell out fast before doing it all over again.

4 - THEY GUARANTEE A #1 RANKING FOR SPECIFIC KEYWORDS
Understand that there will always be demand for specific keywords. Strong brand keywords like "iPhone" or "weight loss" will always be nearly impossible to own. There is simply too much demand and authority already in place that your SEO agency won't slay that dragon. Guarantees are impossible to make in the first place, so guaranteeing a ranking for a specific keyword is insanity. What is possible is incremental progress and local authority. Don't sign up with an agency that promises the world.

5 - THEIR BLOG IS PATHETHIC
If creating quality, relevant content is an essential component of SEO success, and a SEO agency has a blog that's full of bad content, or worse yet, they don't have a blog, look elsewhere for SEO help. Imagine what drivel they would create for you if they can't even do something good for themself!

6 - THEY WON'T OR CAN'T EXPLAIN WHAT THEY'RE DOING
There is NO secret sauce, voodoo, magic, trick, or back door to SEO success. Shady, fly-by-night companies use this talk all the time in order to avoid explain what they are, or more often aren't, doing with your SEO. We already know how to achieve SEO success: quality website construction, quality content, and good relationships with other sites that result in quality links. If your current or prospective SEO agency isn't transparent, you should walk away.

7 - THEY DON'T DISCUSS GOALS BEFORE STARTING
How will they take you where you want to go if they don't know where you want to go?! Is your objective to generate leads? Push traffic to your web store? Gather e-mail addresses? This is the very first thing that needs to be known. Your goals will dictate keywords, content strategy, campaign execution, etc. To accomplish anything worthwhile, your goals must be clearly defined, and if they don't ask about your goals, you should say goodbye.

8 - THEY'RE CHEAP
For possibly some select businesses, a website could maybe be ranked for a few hundred bucks a month. Let's think about the numbers for a moment - content will be a few hundred bucks; links are easily each hundreds of dollars; and we still haven't mentioned labor and overhead expenses. True, legit SEO agencies are often in the range of $3k - $10k per month. If it's too good to be true, it's not true.

9 - THEY CLAIM TO KNOW A GUY ON THE INSIDE
This bursts the bubble of a bunch of SEO agencies, but there isn't ONE SEO company that knows the secret algorithm or that knows a guy that works in Google that skews results in their favor. For Google, SEARCH IS SACRED, so they will never allow anyone or anything to interfere with the integrity of the search results.

10 - THEY'RE UNREACHABLE
it's unfortunate, but many SEO companies are actually side gigs of the operators. These people want some income on the side, but aren't willing to invest the necessary time to master their craft, and therefore, more often than not, leave dissatisfied and disillusioned ex-clients in their wake. To see if you're dealing with a company that's more of a full-time SEO agency, test them with e-mails and calls. If they don't answer or are delayed in responses, that's your red flag.

11 - THEY TALK AUTOMATION
Back in the early 2000's, content scrapers, link building software, and other automation tools were commonplace. These days, those tools will get your website penalized faster than you can say something that doesn't take very long to say. Many SEO agencies will claim their automation is key to their low prices. Curating quality content is not an automated task. And ask for a sample report - you can check the links they've built to see if they look like they were made by some automated software. Mention of automation should ALWAYS immediately remove an agency from contention.

Conclusion
There will always be bad apples out there, but this list should help you avoid being taken for a ride with SEO agencies. NO agency ANYWHERE can guarantee results, because there are simply too many variables out of anyone's control. Your website should be one of your best salesmen, if not THE best, so don't leave it or your SEO up to amateurs. Make sure beforehand that you're dealing with a company that will do honest work, not try to game the system, and is willing to help you understand what SEO strategy they're employing. Of course, we here at Level 11 do SEO for many of our clients, so we're more than happy to answer any questions you may have, and show you what we've done for our clients.


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

Search Engine Optimization - or SEO for short - is the process of improving your website for better search engine results, allowing customers and future customers to find your site faster. Implementing good SEO practices onto your site doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process. A process that takes trial and error.

Although the process works best through trial and error, there is no need to try something we all know doesn’t work.  Today we are sharing with you the six steps to successfully implementing smart SEO practices onto your site.

#1 Web Analytics & Insight
Begin by setting up web analytics. These analytic reports will help give you insight into your traffic, the most popular content on your site and may even explain your customers buying behavior.  This knowledge will help you strategically frame your SEO strategy.

#2 Keywords
Based off of your analytics and strategy, begin selecting a few keywords to populate your site with. These keywords should be chosen based on relevance, search volume and competition. The purpose of them is to begin driving traffic to your site and to improve your page content.

#3 Content
Your website has many SEO-friendly features that allows you to keep your content updated and relevant. Some of these on-page elements are keywords, alt tags, anchor text and formatting.

#4 Usability
Is your site user and mobile friendly? Does it provide your customers with the features necessary? If your customers can’t find what they are looking for or feel overwhelmed when entering your site, they are more than likely going to do business elsewhere.

#5 Google
Your SEO results will be directly impacted by what Google thinks of your website.  Search is sacred to Google, so Google will keep you off the search results page if your site isn't optimized for the device someone is searching from.  You will also be penalized for "spammy" content (over-use of keywords, etc), and for having bad coding on your website (all the behind-the-scenes architecture that only nerds like us really notice).  We have a really awesome tool to quickly "grade" your website for SEO so you can figure out where you can make improvements.

#6 Site Optimization
This is where trial and error come in.  Improving your website's SEO takes time and strategy. You must continually be tweaking your strategy. You simply cannot walk away after reaching this final step.

As you go through these steps, you will begin to have a better understanding of your target audience and what your customers really need and want. Your strategy will evolve and as a result, you will begin to see better search engine results.

Thanks so much for coming to LEVEL 11 Online Marketing to learn more about the awesome world of digital marketing!  LEVEL 11 Online Marketing is the exclusive online marketer for businesses and brands of all sizes across the country, providing an array of services that have led to clients' revenues increasing by millions of dollars.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

Reference:
http://devlin.ca/main/deliver/seo

Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving practice. As one variable is assumed to retain more value by search engines that variable soon becomes exploited by poor SEO’s. So, how do you approach SEO? Often times it ends up being a well balanced portfolio of various fulfillment tactics. At other times, “slow and steady” with establishing proper structures within your website never seem to go wrong.

1 – Diversity

By far, the biggest issue that SEO’s face is diversity. All too often, a website utilizes the same keywords and phrases too many times. What this results in is Google (or other search engines) flagging the website as being spammy, which means your website won't show up when a search would otherwise result in your site being deemed relevant.

2 – Title Tags

Title Tags have been through some serious trends. Found many times throughout any given website (they tell search engines what each page is about), Title Tags have been over- and under-emphasized over the years. Amazingly, during consultations, we'll often find both extremes: attempts to cram too many words in, and even completely empty Title Tags.

Our recommendation is to approach Title Tags as if they were an abbreviated, one sentence summary of what the page is about. That way you focus on what is most important to represent in the Title Tag, which helps limit saying too much. While Title Tags play a huge part in search engine algorithms currently, advances in technology may render them less meaningful over time in terms of importance in search rankings, but they can still help generate clicks. By displaying a summary of what the page is about, it increases the possiblilty that someone will click on that text if your page shows up in the search rankings.

3 – Fluff

Unnecessary fluff is everywhere on websites. From the excessive title tags mentioned above and unnecessary meta tags, to scraped content and old Flash, websites are going through a rebirth. Stuff from a few years ago is now often considered tacky. Much more importantly, a lot of the items from years ago use outdated and slow processes.

How does this impact SEO?  As older things like Flash is slowly overtaken by HTML5, and other coding improvements come along, a lean, mean, quick-loading-website machine is what search engines want to see. User experience means a lot to Google, so if your site loads slower than a competitor whose site has the exact same information, your site will lose because your competitor's load time is better.

4 – Scaled Images

A big issue with pages loading slow is that the images are often not served at proper size. A good example would be if a business owner wanted to display a 500px x 500px sized image of their storefront. They'll take their own picture, download the pic to their desktop, then upload it to their website and scale it to 500px x 500px. However, they didn’t resize it - they just scaled it. Now their website has to load a 3500px x 2500px picture, but display it at 500×500. Even though it is displayed smaller it still has to load the full size image. Why not resize it before loading so the website can quickly serve the smaller image instead? 

5 – Compressed Images

Another fix for images is to take advantage of lossless image compression. This method of compression retains the quality of an image while downsizing the actual file size by as much as 90%. Either compress images individually or use available plugins for popular Content Management Systems, like WordPress. There are also API’s available from popular compression tools for those that would like to integrate compression into custom website backends.

6 – Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URL’s

While it may be true that dynamic url’s/pages should get indexed with no problem, that doesn’t mean that pages with search engine friendly url’s won’t rank higher. All popular Content Management Systems like WordPress these days have the ability to enable search engine friendly url’s. Use it.

7 – .htaccess

The .htaccess file is a text file that is in the root of a website’s hosting directory. This is pretty technical stuff that only those who deal in the nitty gritty of web dev will totally follow, but it's still important to be aware of. This small, single file can literally make or break a website. With just a line or two of code it can help you add redirects when necessary, set caches and expires headers for quicker page loads, mitigate hacking, block IP addresses, all sorts of goodness. Or, it can crash you entire website because someone accidentally left an extra comma on a line. Use the files when you feel comfortable doing so, but don't push it. 

8 – Understanding your own site’s structure

This is basic housekeeping, but is often neglected. You need to keep up on what's actually in your website. Running a thorough audit with a program like WebMeUp will help webmasters know how many pages their website has, what pages have gone missing, where broken links are, what pages have empty Title Tags, etc. The simple task of understanding (or better yet, fixing) a websites structure can be one of the easiest to fix, because you can run audit programs, but is often one of the most rewarding for search engine gains. Treat this like Spring cleaning - occasionally take the time to check on the state of your site.

9 – Content

Unique content isn't just a fad. In fact, it’s always been important. The issue that website owners face is knowing what to write about and how frequently. There is no right answer that applies to everyone. We'd be happy to help you figure out what's right for you, so feel free to reach out for a little guidance. Creating compelling content to generate returning visitors is more important than keyword stuffing.

10 – Outreach

Now that you've got an awesome website and you've began to generate content, how do you spread the word? Outreach. Outreach is one of the slowest, yet most rewarding parts of SEO. Get involved in the local community. Go to business conferences. Offer free tutorials. By getting involved you will generate outreach without all of the awkwardness. Plus, you usually end up feeling good about getting involved with your peers. Be wary of those so-called SEO experts touting getting you backlinks quickly. It's usually just garbage you'll end up with. Developing mutually beneficial connections with partner websites (businesses with similar clientele as you, against whom you don't directly compete) will go a long way for you.

11 – Buyer's Remorse

We've talked a lot about this here, but just know that there's a lot of snake oil salesmen out there, claiming to help you conquer SEO instantly and with little effort. There is no "secret sauce" to SEO, and there certainly is no shortcut to awesome organic rankings. Don't believe in the hollow promises of these fly-by-night agencies.

Summary

While SEO methods and tactics will always change, it seems that many of the most impacting variables are the same as years ago, and will continue to be so well into the future. To be successful in SEO, focus first on the important website variables that don’t change so that you establish a solid foundation for your other efforts. Once you have the foundation in place, you can test the waters with other search engine optimization methods to increase your website’s exposure.

​
About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members throughout Utah, Nebraska, Arizona, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams, resulting in powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

A huge part of your online presence should be ensuring that you are easy to find. Setting up your Google My Business page should be one of the first things you set up as a business. We're often asked by business owners how it was that other businesses get "listed" by Google... yeah, you set up your own listing! Creating your page, and that your information is accurate, will be a huge step towards being found and generating business online.

The steps are simple: you'll simply go to the link below, and fill out your general information. Everything from your address, phone number, business hours, and description, can be put into your page. If your business is home based, and you don't want your address listed, you still need to enter your address (more on why later), yet you can hide that so the public doesn't see it.

Once all of your information is in the system, along with perhaps your logo and some photos you upload, the process is nearly complete. Make sure all of your information is correct and accurate. As with any business, things will change for you in the future, so it's easy to edit your business details anytime and they’re automatically updated on Google Search and Maps, all from a single dashboard.

The final step in your setup is verification. Through a phone call, or more commonly, a post card from Google sent to your physical address, you'll be able to verify that you are indeed you, and your business listing will be complete. 

With your Google My Business page completed, you'll be able to instantly gain more insights about the people that are looking for you and talking about you. You'll be the first to know when people are talking about your business (leaving reviews) so you can respond to them as the business owner, and track your ratings over time. You'll learn about your customers and how they’re interacting with your business, how they found you, and where are they coming from. With Google My Business, the answers are right there. 

Go here to get started, and feel free to contact us if you have questions along the way!

About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

Search engine optimization is a constantly evolving practice. As one variable is assumed to retain more value by search engines that variable soon becomes exploited by poor SEO’s. So, how do you approach SEO? Often times it ends up being a well balanced portfolio of various fulfillment tactics. At other times, “slow and steady” with establishing proper structures within your website never seem to go wrong.

1 – Diversity

By far, the biggest issue that SEO’s face is diversity. All too often, a website utilizes the same keywords and phrases too many times. What this results in is Google (or other search engines) flagging the website as being spammy, which means your website won't show up when a search would otherwise result in your site being deemed relevant.

2 – Title Tags

Title Tags have been through some serious trends. Found many times throughout any given website (they tell search engines what each page is about), Title Tags have been over- and under-emphasized over the years. Amazingly, during consultations, we'll often find both extremes: attempts to cram too many words in, and even completely empty Title Tags.

Our recommendation is to approach Title Tags as if they were an abbreviated, one sentence summary of what the page is about. That way you focus on what is most important to represent in the Title Tag, which helps limit saying too much. While Title Tags play a huge part in search engine algorithms currently, advances in technology may render them less meaningful over time in terms of importance in search rankings, but they can still help generate clicks. By displaying a summary of what the page is about, it increases the possiblilty that someone will click on that text if your page shows up in the search rankings.

3 – Fluff

Unnecessary fluff is everywhere on websites. From the excessive title tags mentioned above and unnecessary meta tags, to scraped content and old Flash, websites are going through a rebirth. Stuff from a few years ago is now often considered tacky. Much more importantly, a lot of the items from years ago use outdated and slow processes.

How does this impact SEO?  As older things like Flash is slowly overtaken by HTML5, and other coding improvements come along, a lean, mean, quick-loading-website machine is what search engines want to see. User experience means a lot to Google, so if your site loads slower than a competitor whose site has the exact same information, your site will lose because your competitor's load time is better.

4 – Scaled Images

A big issue with pages loading slow is that the images are often not served at proper size. A good example would be if a business owner wanted to display a 500px x 500px sized image of their storefront. They'll take their own picture, download the pic to their desktop, then upload it to their website and scale it to 500px x 500px. However, they didn’t resize it - they just scaled it. Now their website has to load a 3500px x 2500px picture, but display it at 500×500. Even though it is displayed smaller it still has to load the full size image. Why not resize it before loading so the website can quickly serve the smaller image instead? 

5 – Compressed Images

Another fix for images is to take advantage of lossless image compression. This method of compression retains the quality of an image while downsizing the actual file size by as much as 90%. Either compress images individually or use available plugins for popular Content Management Systems, like WordPress. There are also API’s available from popular compression tools for those that would like to integrate compression into custom website backends.

6 – Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URL’s

While it may be true that dynamic url’s/pages should get indexed with no problem, that doesn’t mean that pages with search engine friendly url’s won’t rank higher. All popular Content Management Systems like WordPress these days have the ability to enable search engine friendly url’s. Use it.

7 – .htaccess

The .htaccess file is a text file that is in the root of a website’s hosting directory. This is pretty technical stuff that only those who deal in the nitty gritty of web dev will totally follow, but it's still important to be aware of. This small, single file can literally make or break a website. With just a line or two of code it can help you add redirects when necessary, set caches and expires headers for quicker page loads, mitigate hacking, block IP addresses, all sorts of goodness. Or, it can crash you entire website because someone accidentally left an extra comma on a line. Use the files when you feel comfortable doing so, but don't push it. 

8 – Understanding your own site’s structure

This is basic housekeeping, but is often neglected. You need to keep up on what's actually in your website. Running a thorough audit with a program like WebMeUp will help webmasters know how many pages their website has, what pages have gone missing, where broken links are, what pages have empty Title Tags, etc. The simple task of understanding (or better yet, fixing) a websites structure can be one of the easiest to fix, because you can run audit programs, but is often one of the most rewarding for search engine gains. Treat this like Spring cleaning - occasionally take the time to check on the state of your site.

9 – Content

Unique content isn't just a fad. In fact, it’s always been important. The issue that website owners face is knowing what to write about and how frequently. There is no right answer that applies to everyone. We'd be happy to help you figure out what's right for you, so feel free to reach out for a little guidance. Creating compelling content to generate returning visitors is more important than keyword stuffing.

10 – Outreach

Now that you've got an awesome website and you've began to generate content, how do you spread the word? Outreach. Outreach is one of the slowest, yet most rewarding parts of SEO. Get involved in the local community. Go to business conferences. Offer free tutorials. By getting involved you will generate outreach without all of the awkwardness. Plus, you usually end up feeling good about getting involved with your peers. Be wary of those so-called SEO experts touting getting you backlinks quickly. It's usually just garbage you'll end up with. Developing mutually beneficial connections with partner websites (businesses with similar clientele as you, against whom you don't directly compete) will go a long way for you.

11 – Buyer's Remorse

We've talked a lot about this here, but just know that there's a lot of snake oil salesmen out there, claiming to help you conquer SEO instantly and with little effort. There is no "secret sauce" to SEO, and there certainly is no shortcut to awesome organic rankings. Don't believe in the hollow promises of these fly-by-night agencies.

Summary

While SEO methods and tactics will always change, it seems that many of the most impacting variables are the same as years ago, and will continue to be so well into the future. To be successful in SEO, focus first on the important website variables that don’t change so that you establish a solid foundation for your other efforts. Once you have the foundation in place, you can test the waters with other search engine optimization methods to increase your website’s exposure.

​
About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members throughout Utah, Nebraska, Arizona, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams, resulting in powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

In our previous post HERE, we detailed why organic reach on Facebook is so very low (this took up numbers 1-6 of the TOP 11 List). Now, we'll show you how you can increase your organic reach on Facebook! Here's 7-11 of the TOP 11 List of solving the organic reach challenge! For reference, you can learn more about what organic reach is right HERE.

7 - CONTENT IS KING
Having excellent, quality content is so important because whenever people engage with your page, they'll be more likely to see your page in their News Feed later because of algorithms Facebook has in place. Creating content that will get people to like, share, and comment will be a game changer for you.

8 - LEARN ABOUT AND USE FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
This nifty little tool will help you learn more about your audience. Play with it and you'll soon start seeing that it sheds a lot of light on your audience. When you understand your audience, you can tailor content to them that much better.

9 - KEEP AN EYE ON THE COMPETITION
Watching what your competitors are doing (post frequency, content, likes, shares, etc) will help you catch on when something is working well. It also is just a good rule of business to keep an eye on your competition. There are some third-party tools out there that help monitor your competitors, so check them out if you could use more insights on your competition: BuzzSumo, Simply Measured, and Social Bakers.

10 - BUILD A COMMUNITY
Focus on your users, not yourself. If every post is salesy - pushing your product - you'll lose audience. Post useful content and build up a two-way line of communication with your audience. Give away value for free, and they'll recognize what you're really worth.

11 - BE CONSISTENT AND DON'T GET LAZY
Consistency goes a long way. This isn't to say that you need to post all the time - we're simply saying that whether it's best for you to post three times a day or three times a month, be consistent. Being lazy won't help either. There's ways to literally buy followers, but you'll be banned in a hurry, not to mention you're pretty crazy for thinking that your bought audience will be in any way interested in what you have to say (really, having a thousand new followers tomorrow that in no way are interested in you, or more likely aren't even real people, will not make you a cent).

All in all, success in solving the organic reach challenge is all about content. High-quality content that promotes audience engagement will help you in maximizing your organic reach right away.


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

No you're not imagining things... there just really aren't a lot of people that are seeing your Facebook posts. It's like every time you click "POST", Facebook is saying "shhhhh". Well, this is all because of declining organic reach. To learn more about what organic reach is, click here. In this post, we'll examine why organic reach is disappearing (and in the second part of this TOP 11 Series List, we'll see how you can improve your organic reach).

1 - TOO MANY POSTS IN THE NEWS FEED
Facebook needs users to have a good experience because user experience translates directly into $$$. A Facebook study found that 1,500 posts appear in the average user's feed daily, with that number approaching 15,000 for very active users. Because Facebook's goal is to show engaging content, all posts are not created equal. As we often say, CONTENT IS KING. The News Feed sorting algorithm, EdgeRank, analyzes over 100,000 indicators, so everyone has to earn their spot in the feed of users.

2 - POOR ENGAGEMENT TORPEDOS YOUR REACH
EdgeRank has tracked the decline of organic reach. 16% in 2012, 10% in 2013, 6% in 2014, and now 2-4% in 2016. Brands that struggle to connect with their audience have been hit the hardest.

3 - LARGER BRANDS HAVE LOWEST REACH
Many brands still maintain a reach of 4% (even better in some instances), but for pages with 500k+ likes, 2% organic reach is the norm. Some Facebook sources have even unofficially advised some managers to expect that reach to approach 0%.

4 - PAY TO PLAY
Advertising is Facebook's primary source of revenue, and not surprisingly the rate of organic reach is inversely related to the stock price of the company. Some brands simply haven't made the jump to paying to increase reach, so their reach has suffered.

5 - CONTENT IS KING
Socialbakers analyzed over 4,000 brand pages and nearly 700,000 posts, finding that video is the most effective way to reach audience. In the best circumstances, video's organic reach can approach 8.7%, followed by Links and Text Only posts at 5.3% and 5.8% respectively. At Level 11, we use video for many clients and have seen incredible success from it in terms of ROI. Learn more about that here and here.

6 - RELEVANCE TO YOUR TARGET
A case study for Castrol Motorcycle Oil measured a social media campaign. The first phase relied totally on organic reach for six months. It delivered 5,000 fans, 26,000 social interactions and a reach of 2.7 million. However, only 20% of those fans were located in the US. The next phase incorporated paid reach, and this time added 36,000 new fans, half of which were in the US, while reach hit 14 million. The content was the same - tailored to a specific audience - but the paid reach was focused on North America, which made all the difference.

​To finish this TOP 11 Series List, go HERE to learn about how to increase your organic reach on Facebook!


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

This whole "internet" thing really isn't a fad.  It's here to stay, and it has become a part of the lives of nearly every person on the planet. As a brand, your efforts in engaging with your audience can be very profitable and worthwhile. Social media platforms, such as Facebook, provide an incredible soap box for your brand (when used correctly). That being said, there is a cruel fact that many are still unaware of:

THERE ARE NO FREE RIDES!

We'll refer to Facebook as our example. Many businesses post regularly on Facebook. That can be very helpful, yet the organic reach of these posts is suspect at best. Organic reach is defined as the number of people your post will reach through unpaid distribution. Translated, organic reach defined is how many people will see your post when you simply put it out there without paying to "boost" the post. In 2012, organic reach per Facebook follower was around 16% - it's currently around 2-4% depending on how many follow the brand. This means that your post will be seen by a fraction of the people who are already interested in you!

This quagmire of a situation isn't due to Mr. Zuckerberg's greed or anything like that. Facebook is simply a marketer's dream due to the high amount of user information available, so the demand for eyeballs means that PAY TO PLAY is the only way to ensure you are winning audience over your competition. Putting some money behind your posts will automatically drastically increase your reach, often with minimal investment. We at Level 11 take it even farther with our incredible tools that help our clients get reach that they couldn't get by boosting posts on their own.

In review, organic reach is how many eyeballs your content will get without putting money behind it, and while organic reach is incredibly low, very modest investment can ensure your audience expands dramatically.

Learn more about SOLVING THE ORGANIC REACH CHALLENGE right HERE and HERE!


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo.  We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization.  Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

Digital marketing is a discipline that already attracts more than it's fair share of snake oil salesmen. Resellers, middlemen, and pretenders abound (about 90% of SEO companies are resellers, by some counts), which leads to tons of broken promises and unfulfilled agreements. Within digital marketing as a whole is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO (go HERE to learn more about what SEO is and why it's valuable). Simply put, SEO is all about attracting people to your site by having 1) quality website construction and 2) quality, relevant content. If your site is up to par and has what a person is looking for, search engines like Google will be more likely to refer people to you.

SEO companies are often amateur, 1-man shows that are "side projects" at best, where the so-called "expert" claims to know the secret sauce needed for a #1 ranking, when in reality they have no idea how SEO works. What we want to accomplish in this post is to empower you with 11 things you can look for to know if your current or prospective SEO agency is full of it - a relationship doomed to fail.

1 - THEY PROMISE INSTANT RESULTS
The most common irresponsible claim of "SEO companies" is that they can get you to the top overnight. These companies are spamming the heck out of businesses trying to prey on owners that don't have an understanding about SEO. There are plenty of people out there who believe the hype and want to fast-track themselves to the top of the organic search rankings. Sure, there's bound to be some keywords that you could rank for relatively quickly, and your company name should rank #1 with a few things done right, but true SEO results take time. It's not uncommon for results to take months, if not years, to happen. It's a very naïve to think that you can have instant results, especially considering all of the variables that impact SEO. Don't fall prey to the false promise of a SEO agency promising you the world.

2 - THEY HAVE SPAMMY LINKS DIRECTED AT THEMSELVES
Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer, and other backlink analysis tools will help you evaluate an SEO company's site. Maybe 10% of SEO companies will have solid ratings that indicate they're good at what they do. The rest? Busch league. If an SEO company has no links or poor quality links, how could they help you?

3 - THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE SUCKS, OR IS NON-EXISTENT
Today, you have to be on social media in some way, and SEO agencies certainly need to have a strong presence there. It is a display of their ability to create quality content and engage with an audience. Your SEO agency needs to be able to do just that for you, so why work with them if they cannot do it for themself? An under-the-radar agency that avoids social media isn't looking for legitimacy or long-term impact, it's looking to make quick money and sell out fast before doing it all over again.

4 - THE GUARANTEE A #1 RANKING FOR SPECIFIC KEYWORDS
Understand that there will always be demand for specific keywords. Strong brand keywords like "iPhone" or "weight loss" will always be nearly impossible to own. There is simply too much demand and authority already in place that your SEO agency won't slay that dragon. Guarantees are impossible to make in the first place, so guaranteeing a ranking for a specific keyword is insanity. What is possible is incremental progress and local authority. Don't sign up with an agency that promises the world.

5 - THEIR BLOG IS PATHETHIC
If creating quality, relevant content is an essential component of SEO success, and a SEO agency has a blog that's full of bad content, or worse yet, they don't have a blog, look elsewhere for SEO help. Imagine what drivel they would create for you if they can't even do something good for themself!

6 - THEY WON'T OR CAN'T EXPLAIN WHAT THEY'RE DOING
There is NO secret sauce, voodoo, magic, trick, or back door to SEO success. Shady, fly-by-night companies use this talk all the time in order to avoid explain what they are, or more often aren't, doing with your SEO. We already know how to achieve SEO success: quality website construction, quality content, and good relationships with other sites that result in quality links. If your current or prospective SEO agency isn't transparent, you should walk away.

7 - THEY DON'T DISCUSS GOALS BEFORE STARTING
How will they take you where you want to go if they don't know where you want to go?! Is your objective to generate leads? Push traffic to your web store? Gather e-mail addresses? This is the very first thing that needs to be known. Your goals will dictate keywords, content strategy, campaign execution, etc. To accomplish anything worthwhile, your goals must be clearly defined, and if they don't ask about your goals, you should say goodbye.

8 - THEY'RE CHEAP
For possibly some select businesses, a website could maybe be ranked for a few hundred bucks a month. Let's think about the numbers for a moment - content will be a few hundred bucks; links are easily each hundreds of dollars; and we still haven't mentioned labor and overhead expenses. True, legit SEO agencies are often in the range of $3k - $10k per month. If it's too good to be true, it's not true.

9 - THEY CLAIM TO KNOW A GUY ON THE INSIDE
This bursts the bubble of a bunch of SEO agencies, but there isn't ONE SEO company that knows the secret algorithm or that knows a guy that works in Google that skews results in their favor. For Google, SEARCH IS SACRED, so they will never allow anyone or anything to interfere with the integrity of the search results.

10 - THEY'RE UNREACHABLE
it's unfortunate, but many SEO companies are actually side gigs of the operators. These people want some income on the side, but aren't willing to invest the necessary time to master their craft, and therefore, more often than not, leave dissatisfied and disillusioned ex-clients in their wake. To see if you're dealing with a company that's more of a full-time SEO agency, test them with e-mails and calls. If they don't answer or are delayed in responses, that's your red flag.

11 - THEY TALK AUTOMATION
Back in the early 2000's, content scrapers, link building software, and other automation tools were commonplace. These days, those tools will get your website penalized faster than you can say something that doesn't take very long to say. Many SEO agencies will claim their automation is key to their low prices. Curating quality content is not an automated task. And ask for a sample report - you can check the links they've built to see if they look like they were made by some automated software. Mention of automation should ALWAYS immediately remove an agency from contention.

Conclusion
There will always be bad apples out there, but this list should help you avoid being taken for a ride with SEO agencies. NO agency ANYWHERE can guarantee results, because there are simply too many variables out of anyone's control. Your website should be one of your best salesmen, if not THE best, so don't leave it or your SEO up to amateurs. Make sure beforehand that you're dealing with a company that will do honest work, not try to game the system, and is willing to help you understand what SEO strategy they're employing. Of course, we here at Level 11 do SEO for many of our clients, so we're more than happy to answer any questions you may have, and show you what we've done for our clients.


About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns.

If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!

According to Forbes, there are three facts that small business owners must appreciate - (1) Small business owners are experts on what they sell, how it’s used, the industry, etc., (2) Customers want access to what experts know, and (3) Increasingly, customers expect a closer connection to experts.  

A blog can deliver all of this! The chief marketing brain at Red Branch Media, Maren Hogan, said “One of the best marketing strategies for a small business is blogging”.

A blog allows you to provide prospects and clients with informative, non-salesy content that they are looking for! By producing valuable content, one to two times a week, you can begin to establish your company as an expert in a desired field.

A blog can also positively impact your SEO; meaning the more you blog, the more traffic from Google you will receive. And depending on the quality of content you are producing, you may even generate new sales. It will also help expand your online community that you have worked so hard to grow.

Business owners normally have two excuses when it comes to blogging - “I’m not a good writer” and “I don’t have time”.  We’re here to tell you, those are both poor excuses!  Yes, maybe you aren’t an amazing writer but your customers actually prefer that - meaning they are looking for an easy read, no big, complicated words and thoughts.  And once your blog platform is setup, creating new post is really quite easy. As you begin to blog regularly, you will be surprised how quickly new content ideas will come to you.

Whether you already have a blog or are starting one today, the key is to produce value, useful content that your readers are looking for!  Ultimately, blogging will “help you build online communities where you connect with current and future customers in a way that’s increasingly more relevant to them than your website”.

We help clients from many different sectors with their blogging needs, whether they just need a start or they just want us to manage all the content creation for them.  We're always happy to help!

Thanks so much for coming to us at LEVEL 11 Online Marketing to learn more about the awesome world of digital marketing!  If you have questions, comment here or go to the contact tab.

Resources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimblasingame/2014/03/03/what-is-a-blog-and-why-should-small-business-care/#3356876924bd
http://www.cio.com/article/2376444/online-marketing/8-expert-online-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses.html