Micro-Terms: The Little Words Driving Big SEO Results

Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for generating leads and growing your business. But let’s face it—SEO is tough.

If you're not an expert, the time investment in link building, the pressure of keeping up with Google's algorithms, and the 6–12 month wait for results can feel overwhelming.

Sure, you can hire an SEO professional. But that often means committing to long-term contracts and monthly retainers—another cost eating into your budget.

So, what’s a smart, lean business owner to do?

Say hello to micro-terms.
The hidden SEO weapon you probably aren’t using—yet.

What Are Micro-Terms?

Micro-terms are informal, slang, or abbreviated words and phrases people naturally use in everyday conversations. Think:

“Fam” (short for “family”)
“Bestie” (a close friend)
Acronyms like “ROI” (return on investment) or “ASAP”

We use micro-terms all the time—often without noticing. Yet, many businesses overlook these high-intent, low-volume terms in their keyword strategy.

Micro-terms reflect real language used by real searchers.
Ignoring them = leaving conversions on the table.

Why Micro-Terms Matter for SEO

People search for the way they speak. If you aren’t including micro-terms in your keyword research or content, you’re missing critical opportunities to rank for terms your audience is already using.

Example:
A person searching for a dentist in NYC may type:

“dentist new york city”
But more likely: “pediatric dentist nyc” or “nyc pedodontics”

These aren’t just long-tail keywords, they’re micro-terms: casual, precise, and hyper-targeted.

Optimizing for them ensures your content shows up for intent-rich, niche-specific searches.

The Key Difference: Micro-Terms vs. Long-Tail Keywords

Factor	Micro-Terms	Long-Tail Keywords
Definition	Specific slang, abbreviations, or nuanced phrases	Longer keyword phrases
Search Volume	Low	Medium
Conversion Rate	High	Medium–High
Example	“nyc pedodontics”	“best pediatric dentist in NYC”
Goal	Hyper-target intent	Broader visibility

Smart SEO = using both. Micro-terms drive conversions. Long-tails boost traffic.

Where to Find Micro-Terms

1. Google Analytics
Analyze what search terms are currently driving traffic to your site. Compare them to known micro-terms in your industry.

2. Google Search Console
Review impressions and click-through-rates (CTR) to see which terms are working—and which might be underused.

3. Google Autocomplete
Type in your industry terms and review suggested completions A–Z. Yes, it’s time-consuming—but gold for keyword discovery.

4. Social Media Listening
Track language on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok. People use real-life phrases, not marketing lingo.

5. Reddit & Quora
Browse subreddits and threads related to your niche. Look at how questions are phrased, there’s micro-term gold in everyday questions.

6. Google Keyword Planner + SpyFu/SEMRush
Use tools to identify terms that competitors may rank for—even if they don’t appear on your radar yet.

How Micro-Terms Reduce Client Acquisition Costs (CAC)

Let’s say you're running Google Ads with a broad term. You’re paying $50 per click—but only a few clicks convert. Why?

Broad terms attract the wrong audience.

Now imagine using a micro-term like “freelance SEO copywriter for dentists.” It’s low-volume—but highly specific.

✅ You attract the right user
✅ You pay less per click
✅ You convert more

Result: Lower CAC. Higher ROI. More clients.

Benefits of Using Micro-Terms

Higher Click-Through Rate (CTR):
Micro-terms align closely with how users phrase searches.

Lower Cost-Per-Click (CPC):
Less competition = cheaper paid search ads.

Higher Conversion Rate:
The more specific the keyword, the better it aligns with user intent.

Better Audience Match:
Reach exactly who you want—when they’re ready to buy.

SEO Edge:
Most businesses overlook micro-terms. Use them, and you’re ahead of the game.

Long-Term Keyword Strategy: Why It Matters

A long-term strategy uses both long-tail keywords and micro-terms to target:

Niche search traffic
High-intent prospects
Lower ad costs

While micro-terms offer quick wins for conversions, a long-term strategy builds evergreen content that pays off over time.

Yes, it takes research. Yes, it requires effort. But once implemented, this strategy works on autopilot—bringing in qualified leads while you focus on growth.

How to Research the Best Micro-Terms for Your Business

Your business is unique—your keyword strategy should be too.

Here's how to uncover the best terms:

Talk to past clients: What words did they use when describing your services?
Check social comments & reviews: See how your audience talks about you.
Scan Facebook groups, Reddit threads, industry forums
Monitor FAQ pages in your industry
Pay attention to slang, acronyms, or geography-specific lingo

The more authentic your terms, the more aligned your content will be with search intent.

Writing Naturally with Micro-Terms

Micro-terms should enhance, not dominate your content.

Don’t “stuff” keywords. Instead:

Write how your audience speaks
Sprinkle micro-terms naturally into headings, subheadings, and body content
Prioritize readability

People first. Search engines second.

Build Long-Form, High-Value Content

Google rewards depth and relevance. Avoid fluff.

Instead of short, shallow content:

Go long. (1,500–2,500+ words)
Be valuable. Educate, explain, engage.
Use micro-terms strategically throughout

This helps:

Guide users through complex topics
Build authority in your niche
Improve dwell time and reduce bounce rates

Long-form + micro-terms = powerful SEO combo.

Want Help Scaling Your SEO?

Creating optimized content takes time. You could spend hours:

Brainstorming
Researching keywords
Writing
Editing
Fighting writer’s block

Or… you could let us do it for you.

We combine GPT-4 technology with real-time keyword analysis to optimize up to 45,000 pieces of content per day using the power of micro-terms.

✅ Hyper-targeted
✅ SEO-optimized
✅ Built for conversion

Interested? Contact us to get started.

Final Thought: Tiny Words. Massive Results.

Micro-terms are small—but mighty.

They will help you:

Get in front of the right searchers
Reduce ad waste
Increase conversions
Lower client acquisition costs

And the best part? They’re already hiding in plain sight.

Now it's your turn:
Which micro-term are you going to add to your next blog post?
👇 Drop a comment or reach out—we’d love to hear how you're using micro-terms in your SEO strategy.

How to Boost Your Google Ranking By Optimizing for Hidden Keywords

Search engines are a lot smarter these days—they are capable of understanding not only the words a searcher uses to find information, but the intent behind the search. Search engine optimization is now about so much more than using specific keywords in your titles and meta descriptions. It's also about understanding what information is relevant to the interests of your potential clients and providing content that meets their needs.

Think about it—if you're looking to buy a new vacuum cleaner, searching for "vacuum cleaners" is going to give you thousands of results, not narrowing down what you’re really looking for. Instead, you'll search something more specific, like "best upright vacuum cleaners.” You know exactly what it is you want because the search term itself tells you.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a new vacuum cleaner but don't know exactly what kind of vacuum you want, you'll have to use more general terms. You might search for "what is a good vacuum." You probably aren't an expert on vacuums, so it's unlikely that you'd be able to know whether one type is better than another.

This hidden parameter is something that search engines are now able to process. It's a way of gauging user intent and can allow your website to be ranked higher in Google searches.

In fact, it'spossible for you to rank number one on Google search results even if your hidden keyword doesn't appear anywhere else on the internet, as long as there is a hidden keyword that is related to your content and that searchers would use in order to find it.

Understanding Google's Algorithm

In 1996, Google revolutionized search with what was known as Google PageRank. It was the first algorithm to rank websites based on not only how many other sites linked back to it, but also how important those other pages were.

Since then, there have been several updates to Google's search algorithm and some required major adjustments by website owners and SEO experts, like Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Pigeon, Mobile, RankBrain, Medic, Bert and Core Updates.

There are two algorithm updates that stand out the most—Hummingbird and RankBrain.

In 2013 Google released the Hummingbird algorithm update. Hummingbird helps Google better interpret search queries and provide results that match searcher intent (as opposed to the individual terms within the query). This helps to remove irrelevant results and can help searchers find exactly what they're looking for.

With Hummingbird, Google also began using RankBrain—a machine-learning artificial neural network—to better understand a searcher's intent. RankBrain produces better results by associating search terms that may not be directly connected but carry the same meaning.

RankBrain is the reason why hidden keyword optimization works. It's now possible to rank within the search results when you're optimizing hidden keyword terms that match the searcher's intent.

The RankBrain update is considered to be Google's third most important ranking factor. This algorithm does so much more than look for specific keywords in your content—it's a machine-learning algorithm that helps Google understand the meaning behind queries and serve best-matching search results in response to those queries.

Hummingbird and RankBrain work together to help Google better understand hidden keywords for which the searcher may not even be aware they exist.

This is achieved with the help of natural language processing (NLP) that relies on latent semantic indexing (LSI keywords), co-occurring terms and synonyms.

In case you're not familiar with NLP, it's a subfield of linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language—in particular how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data.

But what does all this mean to anyone trying to rank their website?

Basically, Google goes beyond a person’s search query and takes into account the larger context, like synonyms, implied words and personal search history. This algorithm update was designed to make up for the lack of query-specific relevance to a user's search and deliver results with incredible accuracy, pinpointing the meaning—or intent—behind the search.

The Pivotal Moment That Changed Everything

RankBrain requires creators to build out content that meets a user's searcher intent, not just the specific keywords that are relevant to their products and services.

Instead of just reading the words on a page to understand what that page is about, Google now understands what ideas those words represent, including the broader context and related topics that searchers may be interested in.

Google's RankBrain algorithm is constantly adapting to the needs of searchers, which means that your content needs to evolve as well.

RankBrain was initially rolled out to satisfy one simple but large problem: 15% of searches are new and have never been searched before.

Every single day Google processes over 100 million search terms that are extremely specific and valuable to advertisers.

These are long-tail keywords that carry massive intent yet smaller search volumes.

They are too specific and often unable to find through traditional keyword planners or analytic tools.

Searches like "water damage repair near me asap" or "affordable roofing contractor in Boston" are incredibly specific queries that can lead to relevant products or services.

However, this is a major challenge for Google because there is no existing data for these types of searches since they are so specific and unique. These hidden keyword searches were not previously searched, which means Google has no data to analyze and return these results.

This is where RankBrain comes in. RankBrain helps Google understand hidden keywords like those mentioned above—keywords that don't even appear as top auto-suggestions, or if they do appear, they're hidden with dashes.

Using the example above, RankBrain would look at the things instead of the strings.

It would read that hidden keyword as "water damage repair near me," and then pull from the billions of documents in its index to come up with the top ranking related searches—like businesses that may provide this type of service.

RankBrain would also consider environmental contexts (e.g., searcher location) and extrapolate meaning, so this same hidden keyword "water damage repair near me" when typed into a search bar in California, would return completely different results than the same hidden keyword used in Vermont.

These hyper-specific long-tail keywords often go unused by businesses when creating their website content, but these terms are used by searchers who have high intent to purchase and can drive more high-quality traffic to your site.

By using these less obvious and more specific keywords, you can ensure that your content stands out to both search engines and human users.

Expanding on Niche Keywords

Google's algorithm is now capable of picking up on the context of a page's content and can even rank your site for keywords that you don't mention within your copy. These niche keywords are related to your main topic (root keyword) and enable search engines to determine the relationship between your main keyword and the concepts within your content.

Think about the types of words you would use to describe your product or service in a sentence. Then brainstorm additional ideas or concepts related to your services.

For example, if you offer moving or relocation services, related topics may also be preparing for a move, packing up a kitchen or bedroom, or even tips on unpacking in a new home.

Niche keywords can play a huge role in improving your ranking by demonstrating your competence and knowledge for both search engines and website users.

Using these keywords can also help improve your bounce rate. The better understanding search engines have of your content, the more likely they are to show your site to your target audience, ensuring that the people who discover your content are more likely to stay on your page and read the information you have to offer.

With niche keywords, you can rank for additional related keywords and phrases as well as your main ones, providing you with the opportunity to rank for the high intent terms searchers are using to find services like yours. Plus, the more engaging and informative content you create, the harder it will be for your competition to push you out of your top spot in search engine results.

Discovering the Untapped 'Blue Ocean' of Hidden Keywords (The New Way)

You don't have to use only keywords that your competitors are using. In fact, you can create your own hidden keywords that are exclusive to your site, such as your brand name and other phrases and words that are associated with your brand.

By using your brand name as a keyword within your website content, you can help Google associate your brand with your niche, building trust and awareness with both search engines and users.

You can also create user-generated keywords that generally don't appear in keyword tools. This allows you to rank for keywords that are missed by your competitors, while also answering questions that your readers have.

Search Reddit and other forums for common questions about the services you offer and answer those questions within your website content. Be sure to write the question word-for-word in your new content and try to answer it as clearly and simply as possible.

Root hidden keywords are terms that your competitors may not use, but provide you with opportunities to capture more page views and clicks from searchers. For example, if a competitor is using the keyword "water damage repair services," you could use hidden keywords like the city in which you operate, types of damage and other relevant terms within your content. So, for example "water damage repair services in Minneapolis,” "basement flooding repair services” or "burst pipe water damage repair services near me.”

Since hidden keywords are content-focused, they also provide you with opportunities to develop a unique and compelling message that differentiates your company from all of its competitors.

By targeting hidden keywords, you can better position your business for success and help search engines find and understand your content and generate more high-quality traffic to your site.

Creating Hyper-Specific Content for Long-Tail Keywords (Micro-Terms)

Long-tail keywords are very specific search queries that are capable of generating a significant amount of traffic to your website because they help more precisely optimize your content.

By themselves these "micro-terms" only carry 5-10 searches per month and tend to have very low or even no search volume, so the goal here is not necessarily to create content featuring these specific keywords, but to focus on the general topic. In short, answer the question that the long-tail keyword asks.

To generate traffic from long-tail searches, it is important to optimize your web page titles and meta descriptions using specific keywords. Though hidden keywords will not necessarily help you rank for long tail searches, they can play a huge role in determining how often your website ranks on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs).

By examining hidden keywords and using them to inform content creation, you can boost your page views and increase the time users stay on your website.

Furthermore, hidden keywords may help move you up into more prominent positions in search engine results pages, providing you with additional opportunities for conversion and growth. You can even start to rank quickly for these specific searches that have high purchaser intent.

The Holy Grail of Customer Acquisition Formula

A single "micro-term" is not going to do much when it comes to generating leads or calls. With only 5-10 searches per month, it may seem hard to justify the time and effort put into researching the topic and creating content.

However, combining 10,000 "micro-terms" is the holy grail of customer acquisition, as you can intersect buyers at the peak of their buyer journey.

Unlike your main keywords, these "micro-terms" are using vertical keywords that allow you to be more creative and build more engaging content for both your own niche and related niches.

This is one of the best ways to generate brand awareness and build a solid base of loyal readers to whom you can market your products and services.

The hidden keyword approach yields a more targeted audience, which results in a higher conversion rate and provides businesses with an additional source of revenue.

By focusing on hidden keywords, you can attract new customers while also providing valuable content to your existing customer base.

When creating content for these hyper-specific keywords, the goal is to keep them sounding natural and not like a jumble of seemingly unrelated words.

These hyper-specific "invisible search terms" can drive more high-quality traffic to your site and generate leads that are at the peak of their buyer journey, meaning they are very interested in your services.

The Traditional Way (You) vs Artificial Intelligence (AI) Using GTP-3

We all know meaningful content takes a long time to create. You have to research and analyze different topics, add in a bit of your specific knowledge and expertise, create an outline, and then write the piece. Plus, there are revisions and rewrites, as well as multiple checks for grammar and spelling errors before you go live with your new content.

Most marketers use GTP-1, GTP-2, or GTP-3 to help guide their content creation process (if they even have a process at all).

GTP-1 is the use of easily searchable keywords that will help drive traffic to your website, GTP-2 is the repetition and variation of those keywords in your content, and GTP-3 is focused on understanding searcher intent and creating content that will address those needs, in addition to using hidden (long-tail) keywords.

But what if you had access to an engine that could determine hidden keywords for you?

You wouldn't have to wade through all your analytics data and try to figure out what interested buyers were searching for. Nor would you have to take the time to find hidden keywords in competitor websites, glean valuable insights about their business, and then research and write more engaging content.

You can spend hours of your free time researching keywords and creating new content.

Or you can let us optimize your content for you using a combination of Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) and real-time discovery of these hidden search terms, where we can hyper-optimize up to 45,000 pieces of content in a single day.

Interested in learning more?

How to DIY Audit Your Website to Improve Your SEO

Your business website isn’t something you can create and leave running. It requires constant monitoring and frequent maintenance and updates to ensure it contains to function properly and helps meet your online marketing goals.

An SEO audit can diagnose any technical and performance issues with your site, as well as review your content for ways you can better include your keywords and improve your rankings. While some of the issues discovered by an audit are relatively quick fixes, others will take a little more time and effort to correct.

A professional SEO audit can provide you with a comprehensive list of issues and help you develop a strategy for prioritizing and fixing them. But if you’d rather audit your website yourself, we’ve put together a list of questions you need to ask to pinpoint some of the more common issues you may find with your site.

Is your site secured by an SSL certificate?

An SSL certificate provides authentication for your website and enables encrypted communication between a browser and server. Installing an SSL certificate on your site is a relatively easy way to boost your SEO and ensure that your visitors feel secure when using your site.

If you don’t have an SSL certificate, your users will a “Not Secure” label in their browser when they visit your site, which will likely make them think twice about continuing to browse.

To see if you have an SSL certificate installed, type https://[yourwebsite].ext into your browser. If your site loads properly, you have an SSL certificate installed. However, if you see a note that reads, “Your connection is not private,” you don’t have an SSL certificate installed or it isn’t installed properly.

Fortunately, this is an easy fix. Talk to your hosting company about how you can get an SSL certificate through them.

Do each of your pages have an SEO title and meta description?

When you perform a search on Google, each page is listed with a title and a description. Each of your pages should have both a title and a meta description that include keywords and describe exactly what visitors can expect to find on the page.

If you built your site with WordPress, you can easily add SEO titles and meta descriptions using the free Yoast SEO plugin. Your page title should be between 40 and 70 characters, while the description should be between 120 and 155 characters.

Is your site mobile-friendly?

As more and more people use their phones and tablets to browse the web, search engines have put more emphasis on mobile-friendly websites as an optimization factor. Having a functional mobile version of your website also provides a better experience for your users.

If your page isn’t mobile-friendly, you may want to consider switching to a responsive theme that will ensure your site displays and functions properly on all mobile devices.

Does your website load quickly?

If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, users are more likely to become frustrated and leave. You don’t want to drive traffic away, so it’s critical to make sure your site loads quickly.

Your website’s speed is also an important factor in optimization. A slower site or hindered performance can have a negative impact on your rankings.

Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool that analyzes your site, scores your speed and provides recommendations to make your page load faster.

Do your pages have descriptive URLs?

You’ve probably seen URLs that include strings of numbers and letters that don’t have anything to do with the page. These URLs aren’t helpful for optimization or for human visitors to your site.

A descriptive URL includes keywords and lets both search engines and users know what they can expect to find on that webpage. Your URL should describe the content of the page with hyphens between words.

Does your content include relevant keywords?

While technical issues can get in the way of your website performing well, content issues can keep visitors from staying on your site and taking action. Using relevant keywords and phrases helps your site show up in organic search results, improving your chances of ranking higher and being found by your target audience.

Your content is more than just the words on the page. It also includes the titles of your images and the alt text of each image, which describes what the image includes for search engines, as well as users who may not be able to see images.

Do you use any duplicate content?

If you use the same content on more than one page of your website, Google considers this duplicate content and decides which page to display in search results. This can be frustrating if you’ve worked hard to optimize one page for SEO and that page doesn’t show up for your chosen keywords.

Be sure to check your site to ensure that you aren’t repeating content anywhere and that all your content is original and informative.

Simplify your optimization process with our free SEO audit! You can quickly get a comprehensive SEO audit that will diagnose any technical errors with your website, allowing you to jump straight to fixing them and ensuring your site functions smoothly.

Click here to get your FREE SEO Audit now!

Build Your Own Website vs. Hiring a Professional Web Designer

If you own a small business, having a web presence should be part of your business plan.

A website establishes your brand and credibility, markets your business, expands your reach to a wider audience, is always available, saves you time, improves customer service and provides you a medium to showcase your work.

As a business owner, you probably don’t know much about building a website and don’t have a lot of time to learn. You know you need a website for your business, but are faced with a decision to make, build your own website or hire a web professional to do it for you.

In this article, I’ll help you determine if you should build your own website yourself or hire a professional.

When should you build your own website?

If you’ve done any research online, you’ve probably seen services like Squarespace, GoDaddy and Wix.

These services offer a low startup cost and are extremely affordable for small businesses with a very small budget.

What do I consider a very small budget? For the sake of this article, let’s say anything less than $500 a year or less than $50 a month.

So, if you’re a small business owner who has less than $500 to spend, you should probably try building your own website using a website builder.

A website builder can help small business get off the ground quickly by using a pre-designed template with content placeholders for images and text.

Although it’s a quick and easy solution for most, website builders have their pitfalls as well.

Most website builders look cheap and unprofessional. They’re built from cookie-cutter templates that provide limited functionality to the creator, eliminating the need to do any coding.

Advantages

Low cost of entry
Fast turnaround time
No support or maintenance fee

Disadvantages

Limited control of design and layout
Other competitors could be using the same design as you
Time away from other aspects of your business

Why hiring a professional makes sense

One of the biggest misconceptions about website design is that it’s easy and anyone can do it. Website builders make it easy to get online, but there’s more to web design than the aesthetics of a website.

Web design isn’t just about having a pretty looking website anymore; it’s about providing a visitor with the right information at the right time that helps solve their problem.

Hiring a professional web designer helps you create a website that will convey a clear, consistent and compelling message that represents your business. Your message should help establish the trust of your visitors by creating an emotional connection that provides a sense of security and credibility.

Not only will hiring a professional web designer save you time, they will also create a website that is unique, easy to use and will give your visitors confidence in your products and services.

Hiring a professional web designer with experience in search engine optimization (SEO) can help your website rank well with search engines, providing your business with an edge over your competition.

Advantages

Saves you time
Unique to your business
Custom solution for your business needs
Easy to use and navigate
Clear, consistent and compelling message
Experience getting sites ranked in search engines
Provide suggestions for content creation
Establish trust by providing security and credibility

Disadvantages

Higher cost of entry
Pay for support and maintenance

Final thoughts

When it comes to building your website, whether you elect to do it yourself or hire it done, you should be thinking of your website as an investment, not a cost.

Website builders like Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy are attractive because they provide you with immediate savings upfront and fast turnaround times that deliver short-term results.

By looking past the attractive rate and thinking about your business long term, a web design professional can help you set goals, grow your business and take the robot out of your design.

At this point, the decision is yours to make. Do you save a couple bucks up front with a cookie-cutter template or do invest in a branded long-term solution unique to your business?

12 Steps to Building and Promoting a Website

You’ve taken the time to think of a business name and are ready to take the first step to getting your business online, but don’t know where to start. You’ve come to the right place, this series with guide you through the 12 Steps to Building and Promoting a Website.

I’ll provide you with tips and resources that I’ve used and learned over the past 10 years working in web design and development industry. I’ll cover topics from choosing a name to the best marketing strategies, that will help you get the most out of your website and put you in the best position to succeed.

Let’s begin by Choosing a Domain Name.

Choose a Domain Name

After determining a name for your business, you’ll want to get a domain name. A domain name or web address is the address where you can be found online.

When selecting your domain name, I suggest you purchase a domain name that is similar to your business name. This will help with branding your business and making it easier for customers to find you.

For example, I purchased two domain names for my business: thehoppercompanyllc.com and thehopperco.com. I did this for two reasons, ease of use for my customers and visitors and to secure the legal name of my business.

The first thing I think of, in anything I do, is what’s going to be easiest for people trying to find my business. By doing this, I am creating a user-centric model that places users – visitors, customers, partners, etc. – at the center of my business.

Here are some important tips to keep in mind when selecting your domain name:

Keep the domain name short.
Use keywords that describe your service or company.
Avoid numbers and hyphens.
Be memorable.
Use an appropriate domain name extension by knowing what the different TLDs (top level domains) mean by conducting an online search (e.g. .com = commercial business, .us = local US site, etc.).

Nowadays, there are several different TDLs that can be perfectly suitable, but the most common is .com. If you are not sure of who to use for a domain name registrar, please take a look at our Toolkit & Recommendations page for suggestions.

If you would like help thinking of a domain name for your website, you should checkout the domain name suggestion tool called NameMesh.

Decide on a Web Hosting Service

After selecting your domain name, you should determine where you want to host your website by selecting a web host or web hosting service.

A web hosting service provider is a business that provides a service and the technology required to make a website available to be viewed on the internet. This is one of the most important steps in this process before building your website.

You will want to make sure your web hosting company is using SSDs (solid state drives) for faster website performance, can provide you with a free SSL (for shopping and better ranking in search engines) and can provide support 24/7.

In addition, here are a couple of other things to keep in mind when selecting your web hosting service:

Know what your hosting needs are – are you selling products online or just listing services and having people call or email you?
Investigate the reliability and uptime guarantees of the web hosting service provider.
Select a web host that will allow your site to scale – know what upgrade options are available.
Determine and check for the hosting features you need – email, add on domains, etc.).
Check prices for both signups and renewals – determine monthly or yearly pricing.
Pick a host with a hosting control panel (ex: CPanel).
Does the host provide support and support availability that fits your needs?
Terms of service for your account pertaining to their server usage policy.

You can learn more about them on our Toolkit & Recommendations page.

Design and Build the Site

As a business owner wanting a website, you are faced with two options: build the website yourself or hire a professional to do it.

If you want to build the website yourself, you can use services like Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy, but I would highly recommend hiring a professional web designer to build it for you.

Hiring a professional website designer will:

Save you time.
Create your site with the latest technologies.
Make your site unique and easy to use.
Position your website ahead of your competition.
Properly communicate your message.
Build your site so that it’s search engine optimized and SEO compliant.
Make your business appear professional and high quality.
Help your business establish greater credibility.

Think of your website as an investment rather than an expense. You should see anything you put into your website as a value that you seek to get some type of return on, whether that is inbound leads or a monetary value.

When using a template from a website builder, you are limited to the design and functionality of that template, which is often a one-size-fits-all design, meant to cater to the masses, rather than an individual solution custom-developed around your businesses goals like a professionally-built site would be. Instead of limiting your website’s capabilities with a template, you should have your website custom built to help convert visitors into leads and leads into sales.

Publish Your Site

Once your website is complete, you can publish your site and make it “live” for everyone to see.

If you hired a web designer to create your website, they should move your files from a test server over to the “live” server. This is usually included in the price of the project.

Before going live, you’ll want to double-check all of your links, pages and content.

Once again, if you hired a professional to design your website, then this usually done by them. If something does wrong while transferring the site, your web designer should be able fix it.

Start Promoting Social Networks

Social networks are great for building credibility and getting people to help promote your business. By using social networks you can:

Reduce overall marketing costs.
Build your brand and generate traffic to your website.
Increase your organic search engine results.
Connect and associate your brand with other businesses.
Help customers validate your business by providing likes, testimonials and reviews.
Increase brand awareness and increase sales.
Distribute content from your blog by sharing it with your social network.
Reach an impossibly large and diverse amount of people.

If you are planning on hiring or have hired a professional web designer to build your site, you can use the demographics of your target audience to help interact with people likely to buy from or engage with your brand.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) can have a huge impact on the success of your business. SEO is defined as the process of generating traffic to your website using non-paid, organic search results.

I highly recommend hiring a professional to implement it. With more than 200 SEO ranking factors out there, it takes a lot of time and research to understand this ever-changing world and make sure that your site is properly optimized. As someone who has been in the SEO industry for more than 10 years, I’ve compiled a list of important SEO factors that we examine every client’s site against to help increase their search engines rankings.

When thinking about building your business and the value that can come from SEO, you should look at every dollar you spend as an investment that can produce a massive return.

Some benefits and reasons to hire an SEO expert to grow your business are:

Low costs compared to PPC and Adwords.
Higher brand credibility with higher Google rankings.
Increased sales without increasing your marketing costs.
Definite increase in traffic.
Permanent results.
Access to the data and get to keep it.

Register Your Site

After your website is complete, you should register your website with search engines. Submitting your website to search engines will help crawler find and index your site faster and more completely.

Register your site manually to avoid potential harm to your SEO ranks from free search engine submission tools. I recommend registering your site with the top search engines, Google and Bing.

Submit your site to Bing

Submit your site to Google

Register on Maps

Online mapping sites can be a great way to get your name out there. Online maps offer reviews, directions and contact information for people searching for your business or services you provide in the area.

MapQuest

Google My Business

Bing

You can also use Yext PowerListings to control your listings for Google, Yahoo, MapQuest and Yelp.

Pay-Per-Click Ads (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC), also known as Cost-Per-Click (CPC), is an advertising model on the internet in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads are clicked by a user.

PPC campaigns are great for driving traffic to your site for a special promotion or a sale you may be running. However, using PPC campaigns can be expensive, which is why I suggest hiring a professional; you can lose a lot of time and money if you don’t know what you are doing.

As I mentioned earlier, SEO is going to be a better investment for your business because the results are permanent and not temporary like PPC ads are.

Other Marketing Avenues

As there are many other marketing avenues, you will have to determine what avenues are best for your business and audience. Some examples include:

Email marketing
Referral programs
Earned (free) media and PR
Networking events
Retargeting ads and popups
Social media marketing

Maintain Your Site

Maintaining your website is not only important from a security standpoint, but also gives your customers a reason to come back.

Here are some more reasons why you should properly maintain your website:

Make a good impression by having fresh content.
Keep your site content relative and informative to help visitors accomplish their goals.
Rank better with search engines – they love websites that produce new content.
Eliminate threats and vulnerabilities by staying up-to-date with the latest security patches.
Keep current with the latest technology and coding standards.
Check links to other websites and internal pages you may have changed over time.
Monitor website outages and availability.
Create and manage offsite backups in case the server crashes or your site gets hacked.

Measure Results

Every website should have a way to measure and analyze traffic. By tracking visitor activity on your website, you can learn what content is of value on your website by monitoring page views, time spent on different pages, bounce rate, etc. Knowing how your customers are using your site tells you what is working, what isn’t working and what to do more or less of to ensure your customer is having the best experience possible to keep them coming back (as well as gaining new customers).

Our web analytics tool of choice is Google Analytics. With Google Analytics you will be able to:

Understand how your visitors interact with your website.
Learn how to improve your visitors’ site experience.
See how people are arriving to your website.
Determine which pages are performing best and how to improve them to convert them to leads or sales.
Get key insights to who your visitors are and build targeted marketing campaigns around them.

4 Things Small Businesses Need to Know About SEO

You know what SEO is, but do you know how to implement best practices to ensure that Google and other search engines show your website in search results? It’s much easier said than done.

Here are four things all small businesses should know to include when working on improving their search engine optimization.

Alt Tags and Titles

There’s a lot of unique terminology that comes with SEO, but it’s often not as complicated as it seems. Alt tags are simply descriptions for the images on your website. Since search engines can’t read images like they do with copy, alt tags allow your images to be translated in a language Google can understand.

Alt tags are especially important for small business service providers because it helps your images show up on Google searches for potential clients to see your work. Without alt tags, your images don’t exist to search engines, and you can miss out on possible leads and opportunities.

Backlinks

A backlink is exactly what it sounds like: a link on another website that leads back to your site. The important thing here is to create quality over quantity. You don’t want spammy sites to link to yours.

Think about all the people you’ve worked with, like other businesses or even publications. These are opportunities to create backlinks. When you create a blog post about a project, be sure to tag all the vendors or other contractors you worked with and ask them to do the same for you.

Another way to create backlinks is to be active on social media and interact with blogs and websites on which you want to be featured. Engage in discussions, share your information and knowledge, and drop links to your website when relevant. It’s important to do more than just drop a link because you don’t want to spam people. That’s definitely bad for business and people frown upon self-interests promotion and usually gets ignored.

Content

You’ve heard it, and we’ve said it: content is king. No matter how cool your website is, if you don’t have quality content that people want to read, you’re not going to get the leads you want. Don’t post blogs just for the sake of blogs—create educational and highly readable content that informs and entertains.

Blog posts aren’t just a way to show off your projects and add more SEO keywords—they’re a way to introduce prospects to you and give them an idea of your personality and skillset.

Want to learn more about content? Check out 5 Things Every Small Business Should Know About Content Marketing.

Optimize Your Homepage

Your homepage is, of course, the most visited page on your website, so it has to not only make a great first impression, but keep visitors intrigued enough to check out different pages on your site.

It’s essential to include your main keywords in your homepage title and throughout the content on the page to help you move up in search engine rankings. Know what keywords you want to rank for and be sure they’re on your homepage, but don’t overdo it, or your content will be more spammy and less quality.

While this is just the beginning of what you need to do to optimize your website and content for SEO, it’s a great start getting your site on track to move up in search engine rankings and get more results.

Optimizing for SEO takes time and thought, and it can feel like an overwhelming amount of work, especially when you have a full schedule and other facets to deal within your business.

But what if you could improve your SEO without lifting a finger?

That’s where we come in: a full-service, done-for-you SEO and getting you to the first page of Google results for your chosen keywords.

Why not leave the SEO to the experts?

What is website architecture?

Website architecture is the approach used to design and plan a website to meet both business and user needs.

Why website architecture matters

Developing good site structure enhances your chance of higher rankings in search engines. A search engine’s algorithm is complex and based on hundreds of factors, mainly focusing user experience. The way a user interacts with your site provides search engines with data they need to help determine how to rank your site.

In this article, we’ll cover several important factors and decisions that website owners need to make that are crucial to deploying an SEO-friendly site structure.

Good website architecture decisions – technology decisions

Avoid dynamic URLs

Dynamic URLS are URLs that contain dynamic characters like “?”, “_” and parameters are not user-friendly because they are not descriptive and are harder to memorize.

Lower click-through rates.
Difficult for a user to copy and paste.
Difficult sharing the link over the phone or writing it down.
Not transparent as to where the link will take you and what the page is to the user.
Difficult to read dynamic URLs compared to static URLs.

Avoid Session IDs

A Session ID is a unique number that is assigned to a specific user for the duration of that user’s visit (session).

If your website uses HTTP cookies for sessions, spiders cannot accept cookies and are blocked from those pages.
Your website could end up with hundreds of versions of the same URL, causing duplicate content and resulting in a Google Penalty.
Linking to pages with a session ID will not help with page rank since each session will have a different ID for each visitor.

Avoid Flash, JavaScript and Java for links and content

Flash is difficult for crawlers to index. Use HTML5 instead of Flash for optimal usability and SEO.
Important content should be placed on your website with easy to read HTML.

Avoid redirects

Set your preferred domain to either www or non-www. Fixing this will prevent search engines from indexing both versions of your site.
Avoid issues with HTTP/HTTPS displaying two versions of your site or invalid certificate errors. Having an invalid SSL certificate will cause most browsers to either prevent users from visiting your site or display a warning showing them an “insecure connection”.
Avoid 302 redirects unless it is for temporary use. 302 redirects do not transfer “link juice” to another page.
Verify the use of 301 redirects, which are permanent redirects. 301’s are usually used to redirect duplicate content or URLs no longer accessible. If SEO matters to your website, you should be using 301 redirects as your default method for redirections.
Avoid using Meta refresh redirects.

Good website architecture decisions – structural decisions

Website hierarchy should match the way users search

Good websites are built to lead and funnel users to make actionable decisions that provide them with the answers they are searching for.
Your website hierarchy needs to have a flow that is easy to navigate and makes sense to your users.
Your URL structure should follow your navigation hierarchy.

Minimize page depth

Page depth refers to the number of clicks a user is away from a specific page while starting at the homepage.
A general rule of thumb is to keep your page depth to 3 or fewer clicks.
Pages with more than 3 clicks from the homepage are known to perform poorly with search engines and are not crawled as often as pages with a page depth of 1 or 2.
Your page depth is not only important for user experience, it also matters to Google. Pages that are buried in your site have less link authority, also known as “link juice”.
The less link juice that is passed, the less likely Google is to index those pages.

Eliminate distracting elements in your header

Simplify your navigation. Provide only the most important pages to your site in your main navigation.
Doing so let’s search engines know that those pages are the ones you want to be most visible.

Cross-link relevant content

Aids in the navigation of the website.
Distribute page authority and ranking power throughout the website.
Avoid linking back to your homepage or contact us pages from internal pages.
Use anchor text to describe the page in alt tags, but don’t over optimize and try not to think too much about it.
Be natural in linking. Think of what would be beneficial to your user and not what is going to get you ranked better in a search engine.
Don’t use too many links on a single page.
Link to relevant content. Make sure the content is something that follows a theme or is relevant to the content on that page.

The easiest way to develop your site hierarchy is to make a list of categories and subcategories, then create topics and actions your users will perform under those subjects. For more information about site architecture, take a look at our article on the How to Get Your Website to Speak to the Right Audience.

Final thoughts

By making good technological and structural decisions, you’re building a better and more functional website for your users. When you focus on a user’s experience, not only will enhance your chance of ranking higher in search engines, you’ll also increase user engagement leading to higher conversion rates.

How to Edit Your Hosts File in Windows

Navigate to your hosts file

Your host file is typically located within c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. If you don’t see it there, other possibilities are as follows:

Windows 95/98/Me c:\windows\hosts
Windows NT/2000/XP Pro c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows XP Home/Vista/Windows 7 c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows 8 c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows 10 c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Backup your hosts file before you start editing

Best practices would suggest you to backup any file before you make any edits, whether that’s a WordPress plugin, core or theme file. Here’s the naming convention that I recommend: name_file_yyyymmdd. Here’s an example id I were to do this backup today: host_file_20171109.

Follow these steps:

Located the host file using the steps above.
Right-click on the file and select Copy.
Go to the Desktop or any location where you want to store the backup file.
Right-click and select Paste.
Right-click on the file and select Rename.
Change the file name using the suggested naming convention above (name_file_yyyymmdd)
Hit Enter on your keyboard or click somewhere on your Desktop away from the file to save the new name.

Opening your hosts file

Now that the backup is complete, navigate back to the location of the original host file. Since host files are not in a standard .txt file format, we will need to select the program we would like to open the file with. I suggest using Notepad since the program is installed with the Windows operating system and it’s easy to use. Right-click on the host file and selecting Open With from the right-click menu. From the right-click menu, select Notepad.

Modifying your hosts file

Within your hosts file, you should see something like the following:

Below the last # symbol, enter the IP Address of the development or testing server. You should enter two lines, one for the www version and another for the non-www version.

My Google Ranking Dropped Dramatically! What Happened?

You’ve spent tons of time working on your website and online presence in order to improve your ranking and drive more traffic to your website. But one day you wake up to find your ranking has dropped. What do you do now? Do you have to start all over again?

Don’t panic! A stumble in the rankings happens to everyone, and it can be caused by a variety of factors. Google’s algorithm is always changing, which means what worked for your website six months ago may not work so well now. Your rankings may even return to normal the very next day.

But if it’s been a few days—or if you just want to be sure nothing else is wrong—check out these reasons why your ranking may have dropped.

You recently made big changes to your site

One of the most common culprits of ranking drops are major changes to a website. If you’ve created a bunch of new pages, made changes to a lot of content or done any redesigning of your site, you’re likely to see your rankings fluctuate. If this is the case, there’s no need to worry—your rankings will likely return to normal.

Your website has technical issues that need to be fixed

A variety of technical errors can prevent Google from crawling and indexing your site correctly and have a negative impact on your ranking. Issues like slow load time or too many redirects can cause your ranking to fall. An SEO audit can diagnose any technical issues with your site, allowing you to build out a plan for correcting these errors.Get a Free SEO Audit to find out how well your site is performing.

Google updated its algorithm

In many cases, an update to Google’s algorithm is the culprit behind a change in ranking. Google makes hundreds and even thousands of changes to its algorithm each year, and while some are minor, others can have a huge impact on your online marketing. If your ranking has recently dropped, check in to see if Google has recently updated its algorithm.

Searcher behavior and intent has changed

Sometimes what people are looking for changes drastically, leading Google to adjust its concept of what a relevant website for a particular search query is. Similarly, the demand for a specific product or service can fluctuate over time, meaning certain search terms can become harder to rank for.

Your competitors are beating you out

Depending on your industry, you may have some pretty intense competition, and their own marketing efforts could push your ranking down. Take a look at what websites have taken your place in Google’s search results and research why they may be performing better than you. Do they have better, more keyword-rich content? Do they have more quality backlinks? Do their pages load faster? Once you know what your competition is doing to beat you, you can develop a plan to take back your ranking.

These are just a few of the reasons why your ranking may have dropped. An SEO audit can help you pinpoint some of the performance and technical errors that may be negatively affecting your ranking, and it’s the first step in building out a comprehensive content strategy to return to the top of the search results.

DIY SEO Guide for Small Businesses

You’ve designed and built a website for your business and created content. All that’s left to do is to drive more traffic to your site and improve your rankings on Google. You just need a little to optimize your site for search engines and watch the leads roll in.

Now, where do you start?

Most small business owners find themselves here, knowing they need to work on their SEO but lost about where and how to begin. You’re not alone. SEO can be overwhelming and confusing, but it doesn’t have to be.

While SEO has a lot of components, it’s actually a fairly straightforward concept. SEO involves understanding what your target audience is searching for and creating content around those topics, as well as dealing with technical issues that can get in the way of your ranking.

Before you hire an SEO expert or agency to help your site get ranked on the first page of Google, check out our list of do-it-yourself SEO tips to get you started on the right path with optimizing your site.

Know your target audience

In order to be found by your desired customers, you have to know how they’re looking for businesses like yours. Think about your ideal customer and list out their general demographics: age, sex, geographic location, etc. You should also think about their pain points: Why would they want to work with your business? How can you solve a problem for them or meet a specific need that they have?

One of the best ways to figure out what your customers want from you is to talk to your previous customers. Find out what questions they had before working with you and what problems you helped them solve. Remember, in order to be found by your target audience, you have to build your content around what they want and need.

Determine your keywords

Once you have a clear grasp of your target audience and what they’re looking for, it’s time to create content that answers their questions and helps solve their problems. But before you start creating copy for your site and writing blog posts, you need to figure out your keyword strategy. Keywords are the words and phrases that your target audience types into a search engine when they’re looking for products, services or the answer to a question.

Ask yourself: What keywords do you want to rank for on Google and other search engines? Brainstorm keywords related to your industry and the products or services you offer. Keep in mind that you may use different terms for your products and services than customers do, so search for phrases without any of the industry jargon.

Research your competitors

Once you know your keywords, see who your top competitors are and what they’re doing right to get ranked on the first page of Google. Ask yourself these questions:

What content do they have that you don’t?
How do they structure their site?
Where do they place keywords on their site?
How do they engage visitors?

You should also take a look at their social media profiles and reviews to see what users love about working with them. This is a great way to figure out ways you can improve your own offerings and user experience.

Create content that matches searcher intent

Google’s goal is to present the most relevant results to their searchers, so if you want to rank, you need to build content that matches the intent of those searchers. Your content should answer a question or solve a problem that searchers have.

Focus your content around the keywords that users are most likely to search for when seeking services like yours, so build out your site content with those words and phrases in mind. When building out new pages, make sure you create a page for each of your high-priority keywords for which you want to rank.

Build pages that are optimized for search

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing the elements of a webpage, such as the content and structure, to help it rank higher in search engine results.This includes:

Updating the content on your pages to include your chosen keywords
Building out new pages based on popular search terms
Creating a keyword-rich content area, such as a blog or resource library

As you create new content, make sure that you include keywords in the textual elements of the page, such as the headings, title tags and meta descriptions.

Take advantage of Google Analytics

If you want to do your SEO work well, you need to gain an understanding of analytics. Understanding your website’s traffic, conversions and other data can help you see where you need to improve and enable you to develop a more powerful SEO strategy.

Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track traffic to your website and analyze your visitor demographics. You can use Google Analytics to see how people find and use your website and determine which pages are the most popular. Plus, you can set goals to reach and track your progress.

Eliminate duplicate content

Using the same content in multiple places on your site can quickly cause your ranking to drop. When search engines find the same piece of content on more than one page, they will show only one page in their search results, keeping the other pages from ranking. Keep your content fresh and original to improve your chances of being pushed to the top of search results.

Use internal links

An internal link connects one page of your site to another. Using internal links on your site makes it easier for users to find and read more of your content and also helps Google to crawl your site.

Use descriptive URLs

Optimizing your URLs is a key component of SEO and can have a huge positive effect on your ranking. When creating a new page on your site, make sure that the URL is easy to read and includes relevant keywords that relate to the content of the page. Keep your URLs as short as possible and be sure to use hyphens in between words.

Improve your site speed

How quickly your website loads is a critical part of how search engines like Google rank your site. A slow load time can also have a negative impact on your user experience, leading visitors to leave your site if pages, images and videos take too long to load.

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

Don’t you hate it when you visit a website and it takes forever to load? Your prospects feel that way too, so if you want them to stick around and becomes customers, you need to make sure that your site loads quickly.

These days many people are more likely to browse a website on their phone or tablet than on their computer. Google has even made mobile-friendly a factor in how it ranks websites in search results.

Fix your technical SEO issues

A few minor technical issues on your website may not be a big deal, but those small problems can quickly add up and have a negative effect on your SEO.

Start with a free SEO Audit to pinpoint the major technical SEO errors on your site and how to fix them.