SEO - Mason Interactive

A lot that goes into a successful SEO campaign. At times, keeping up with the ever-changing search engine algorithms and SEO best practices can be overwhelming. While some practices can be effective, some can significantly damage your search ranking.

We listed five of the most common SEO mistakes you should avoid when starting an SEO campaign.

1. Choosing the Wrong Keywords & Keyword Stuffing

Choosing the right keywords for your SEO campaign is extremely important. This basically dictates what you will appear for in search engine results pages (SERPs). For example, if your company sells “digital marketing services” you do not want to optimize for keywords like “traditional advertising” or “print advertising services”. Users searching for those keywords are not looking for digital marketing and will likely result in a bounce. You want to make sure that your services line up with a users’ search intent, so when they click on your result they find what they are looking for.

Keyword stuffing is another issue that occurs often. Google is a very intelligent machine and knows when something looks “spammy”. Stuffing a bunch of keywords into your copy will NOT increase your rankings. Google ranks websites based on the QUALITY and LENGTH of content. Pick a few high-value keywords and place them strategically throughout your content to maximize your SEO efforts.

Check out this on-demand webinar for tips on how to choose the right keywords for your business.

2. Duplicate Content

Understandably, it requires a lot of effort to create original content for each part of your website. Some may be tempted to copy content from one page to another and think they have a better chance of ranking for incorporated keywords. However, duplicate content has the opposite effect. Google penalizes sites that have duplicate content, so be sure to create unique content for each page on your site.

3. Titles & Metas are Heavily Overlooked

Meta titles and descriptions are what the SEO world likes to call “low-hanging fruit”. These bits of HTML code help Google understand what your pages are about. Making sure that your titles and descriptions are up-to-date with high-value keywords that correspond to your pages is a very easy way to make sure you stay in Google’s good graces. Meta descriptions should try to be kept under 160 characters while meta titles should be kept under 60 characters, with the most high-value keywords towards the beginning.

4. Quality over Quantity When it Comes to Links

Is having external links in your site’s content important? Yes. Does that mean you should load up your content with external links? No. The quality of external links is more important than the quantity. You want to have links that lead to credible and authoritative sites. In addition to the quality of the link, you want to pay attention to the anchor text used for the external link. Avoid using “click here” or similar call to actions, because this wastes precious SEO opportunities. If you are linking out to a digital marketing agency’s SEO page, the anchor text should be “SEO services”.

5. Ignoring Your Site’s Mobile Experience

Mobile speed is not just a Google ranking factor, it is also a user experience (UX) issue. When a user visits your site on their mobile device, they are likely to leave your site if it is taking too long to load. This can result in a drop in traffic and leads, which can be easily prevented. Google provides a free Pagespeed Insights tool where you can check your mobile and desktop speed, and even see Google’s recommendations for improving your score.

Making sure that you take these five strategies into consideration when building an SEO campaign will severely impact the effectiveness of your campaign. Contact us for more information on how to build the best SEO strategy for your business or schedule a free marketing analysis with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can help you.

Here at Mason Interactive, we embrace close collaboration between our team of digital marketing specialists. Even virtually, we host regular happy hours and company outings to maintain our company culture. This is especially important when onboarding new employees virtually.

Marissa Bavaro, an SEO Manager, was our first team member to be welcomed to the Mason family virtually earlier this Summer. Let’s learn a little bit more about Marissa and how she is enjoying Mason so far.

Who is Marissa Bavaro?

Where do you live and how long have you been at Mason?

I live in Long Island, NY and I joined Mason as an SEO Manager a few months ago.

What is your favorite thing about Mason?

I am loving how close-knit everyone is. Of course, we all have our own responsibilities, but we work together as a team and there is always someone ready and willing to help you if you need it.

Do you have any hobbies, pets, etc.?

I just got a new kitten named Mochi! She’s already the love of my life but besides her, my hobbies include pretty much anything creative: baking, painting, candle making, and crocheting. I love working with my hands to create something useful and beautiful!

What does a typical work day look like for you?

I start my morning with the 9:15 all-hands zoom call where we all go over the plan for the day. I then either get straight to work on client’s websites, or I have a zoom meeting with Team Rocket (the SEO team) to go over priorities. My days consist of client meetings and then focusing on getting client work done. We round that all off with another all-hands zoom meeting at 5:15 to close out the day.

What are your must-have WFH essentials?

I have a desk in my bedroom where I sit sometimes, but I like to move around a lot during the day. I get the best lighting in my kitchen so I like to take client calls from there when I can. Coffee and seltzer are also very much essential to my everyday life. I would not be able to function without Dunkin and carbonated water.

Do you have a specific WFH “vibe”?

I love working from home, I am a total homebody, but I do miss the social aspect of being in the office. Nothing beats my 2 second commute from my bed to my desk though. Fall scented candles are definitely a big part of my WFH vibe, mainly anything that smells like marshmallows. Throw in a good podcast or Charlie XCX’s new album and I am ready to get stuff done.

What do you think the biggest change has been for you since quarantine?

The biggest changes for me since quarantine are starting my job here at Mason and getting Mochi. Both changes that I’m very grateful for! Back in August when we had a mild hurricane, most of us lost power at home. It was difficult to deal with working from home and not having power *at home*. Normally, I would just go to a Starbucks to get my work done, but due to the pandemic, that couldn’t really happen. Nevertheless, we figured it out as a team!

Nice to Meet You, Marissa!

Mason Interactive’s digital marketing webinar series continued with a webinar titled: The Secrets of SEO for eCommerce. Webinar hosts Jenna Vaccaro, Director of SEO, and Brook Shepard, Founder & CEO of Mason Interactive, explored how search engine optimization can be used to attract more shoppers to an online store, and gave tips on SEO best practices.

In short, the webinar covered the SEO fundamentals every eCommerce business owner and marketing professional can learn from. Watch the webinar replay or continue reading for the key highlights.

What is SEO and Why it Matters

Search Engine Optimization is the scientific art of optimizing a website around specific keywords in order to rank higher in search results, such as Google. The science behind SEO is to understand Google’s algorithm and to use those indicators for optimization. This is combined with creativity (art) that goes into content, images, and messaging.

When talking about digital marketing, businesses are more inclined to invest in advertising because of the immediate results. SEO is often underestimated as a marketing channel, however, looking at analytics of any eCommerce store, organic traffic is usually the best converting channel.

“What we see with our clients in general is that people are willing to spend money on advertising but not so much on SEO”, says Brook. “Our recommendation is to make SEO a priority – it converts better and is cost-efficient-, alongside media buying. With the Holiday season coming up, there is still time to get ready and double down on SEO”, he continues.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) have evolved over time, and while the user experience has improved, SEO professionals are faced with more complexity and increased competition over the highest ranking positions.

Getting on top of the SERP is important because the higher a website ranks, the more searchers will click on the website, and the more sales the website will generate. Jenna used recent statistics to speak to the importance of SERP and shockingly, only 4.8% of searchers make it to the second page of search results, and only 1.1% to the third. This may make you wonder where does all the traffic go? 32.5% of traffic goes to the top result, 17.6% to the second result, and less than 5% goes to the sixth result.

How is SEO Different for eCommerce

eCommerce SEO has a similar idea than any traditional website; show up on search results and provide relevant content to the user searching for a keyword. For example, a business that sells black shoes should have their pages optimized for black shoes because a user is searching for that and they intend to buy black shoes.

“You want to say to the user that you have the product they are searching for, and you have optimized this page accordingly because you knew they wanted to buy this product.”
Jenna Vaccaro

Furthermore, businesses can help visitors make purchase decisions through vivid product descriptions and beautiful, eye-catching photography, and plenty of reviews. When done right eCommerce SEO is a free source of high converting organic traffic.

Most Common SEO Myths Uncovered

On the next section, Jenna shed light on a few common SEO misconceptions and explained why they are fiction.

Myth 1: “I did a lot of upfront SEO work on my site when it launched, so I never have to do anything again.”

You are certainly off to a good start if you invested on SEO when your site was first launched. However, SEO is ever-changing and should be treated as a marathon, not as a sprint. Focus on keeping your site healthy and aligned with the best possible optimization at all times. You may decide to scale back on SEO because it is a low season for you, and as a result, your competitors take over your position on SERP. Keep up with your competitors and the latest algorithm changes to maintain your rankings.

“Many clients come to us to take the next step. They have already done a fair amount of optimization, and they want to focus on a specific area such as conversion rate optimization or local SEO. After all, SEO provides various opportunities with hundreds of thousands keywords”, Jenna shared.

Myth 2: “I need to post long-form content every day in order to rank high.”

Content length can contribute to SEO ranking, as does the quality of content. However, a multitude of other factors contribute to consistently maintaining a high rank, including:

Topic relevance. It’s important to produce useful content that speaks directly to your product, is fresh, and provides value to the reader. A good starting point is to look at aspirational brands, what they do and what content they produce.
Natural backlinks. Creating shareable content should be the main objective. If your content is compelling, readers will want to share it naturally, and link back to your content.
Page speed and user experience. Ensure that your site is easy to navigate and your pages load fast. A frustrated user will leave your site and go to your competitor.
Mobile friendliness. The browsing experience should be the same on mobile as it is on desktop. Make sure that buttons and links are spaced out and easy to click with a thumb (especially add to cart button!).

Myth 3: “It’s 2020. SEO is dead.”

While the digital marketing space grows through paid media, many marketers believe SEO has reached the end of its lifespan. Search engine optimization may have changed and evolved, but it certainly is not dead nor dying. In 2019, 65% of eCommerce sessions were generated through search traffic and 33% were generated through organic search. As long as the search engines exist, consumers will continue looking for products online, and if an ad is not there, the first thing the searcher will click is the top organic result.

Top Areas of Focus for eCommerce SEO

Jenna broke down the content into key takeaways starting with the very first step of every successful SEO campaign; keyword research. Every website owner should compile a list of keywords that fit their brand, optimize their website based on those keywords, and consider how to rank above competitors.

Moreover, businesses that focus on creating good quality content generate more natural backlinks and rank higher. Building a strong internal link structure is equally important to boost authority of singular pages. For example, if you write a blog article that mentions a tote bag, link that back to the page where you sell tote bags.

Ongoing technical updates and regular audits, Jenna emphasized, are needed to ensure the website is running smooth and fast. An audit will uncover broken links and orphan pages (pages that don’t link anywhere), among other areas that have an impact on the SEO ranking and user experience. Not sure how to conduct an audit? Contact us for a free SEO audit.

Finally, it’s essential to continuously analyze the data and measure success. Use the data to evaluate what you can do to get more users to click and to buy. Be aware of what page people are dropping off of, why the conversion rate is low, do you have unnecessary content or problems with the user experience. At Mason Interactive we know that performance drives the strategy and we look at the data weekly, biweekly, and monthly.

“Yes, you want to know how many keywords you rank for and how many users come to your site. But you also want to know what to do with that.”
Jenna Vaccaro

If you are interested in learning more about your website’s SEO performance, sign up for a free consultation with our SEO experts.

One of the most common questions we get from prospective clients is “What is the difference between Paid Media and SEO?” To answer this question simply, Paid Media is when you pay for your position on SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page) or other media channels. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to your site and ranking on SERP organically.

For emerging brands, or brands who are looking to partner with a digital marketing agency for the first time, jumping into too much at once can be daunting, or sometimes even impossible due to limited budgets. In this article, we have highlighted the main benefits of each service, Paid Media and SEO, to help you decide which service (or both) is the best fit for your business.

Renting Your Apartment or Owning Your Home?

We use a special analogy when making a distinction between Paid Media and SEO. Paid Media services are very similar to renting your apartment. You are paying monthly for a great location and easy access to everything you need. However, as soon as you stop paying your rent, you get kicked out and can no longer enjoy that perfect location.

SEO services are similar to buying your home. Yes, you do have to save up for a little while, and take care of a few monthly responsibilities to keep up with, like mortgage payments and electric bills. However, you own this home, and no one can kick you out.

Paid Media is a temporary location, and you can only stay at the top of SERP if you are paying every-time someone clicks on your ad – whether they buy your products or services, or not. Once you stop paying for your top spot, you no longer show up for any searches. SEO is more of a long-term effort, however once you have secured your spot on SERP, you will maintain your position even if you stop making optimizations for a few months.

Is Paid Media What Your Business Needs?

Paid Media has a lot of positive benefits. The number one reason why most people use it is because of the instant results they get. As soon as you start paying for your ads, you will get eyeballs and clicks (learn more about Pay-Per-Click Marketing).

Paid Media gives you more control, and immediate results.

Audience targeting and control are other great benefits of using Paid Media. You can control who sees your ads and when, in what geographic area, and what keywords your ad shows up for. Having the control over when your ads are showing and who sees your ads is a major advantage.

Scalability is very important, especially in today’s world. Unexpected events arise and sometimes, you have to scale back marketing efforts to move funds to other areas. Paid Media is great for being able to scale your spending, and whether you have a sizable budget or not, you are most likely to see results.

SEO Has its Pros, Too

SEO is a great option for businesses that are looking to get more exposure. There are a few different aspects to SEO, including onsite optimization, offsite optimization, and technical SEO. All of these different aspects will help with your organic strategy and improve rankings on SERP so new customers can discover your product or service.

SEO is a great option if you are looking to get more exposure.

Many searchers know that the top three results on SERP are always going to be paid ads. If you don’t know, all paid advertisements on Google search results page have a little “Ad” icon next to the result. Knowing this, they usually scroll right past them to the first organic result. In doing so, these searchers are aware that your site is credible in the eyes of Google, and credibility goes a long way. When searching on any search engine, most people know that sites on the first page of organic search results are the most credible and trustworthy.

When it comes to budget, SEO is often more cost effective than Paid Media. You are not going to pay every-time someone clicks on your ad, you are just paying for the work that has to get done; no hidden fees or additional funds required.

The Leaky Bucket

Yet another analogy – The Leaky Bucket. This is something we use to describe lead flow. If you focus all of your marketing efforts into one specific area of marketing, it could slow or even stop the leads coming in. For example, you decide to move all of your marketing efforts to Remarketing. Now, whatever leads you have in your bucket are being remarketed to; and that is how it should be. However, when you are focusing only on remarketing and ignore customer acquisition, you now have no new leads filling up your bucket. There always needs to be a balance between acquisition and remarketing so you can fill your bucket up and remarket to them later.

What’s the Verdict?

To wrap everything up, both Paid Media and SEO have their pros and cons. Ultimately, the goal would be to use both of these strategies together and hand-in-hand, but that is not always a possibility due to budget and resource limitations.

Brands who are looking to focus on new customer discovery should focus more on SEO, whereas Paid Media works best for those who want to be able to fine-tune who they market to. If you are looking to start a marketing campaign and don’t know which strategy would be best for your business, contact us today or schedule a Free Marketing Analysis!

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the organic practice of increasing both the quality of traffic to your website as well as the quantity of traffic. Not only does SEO appeal to search engines, but it is also highly involved in understanding users and their behavior.

When we talk about organic, we are talking about non-paid advertising. When a user searches for something and gets taken to a SERP (search engine ranking page), normally, the top three results are paid advertisements. Everything after those ads are organic search results, and the first page of results are where you want your site to live.

If you are new to SEO, or are looking to increase your organic efforts, continue reading to learn about some of the steps Mason Interactive suggests to improve your site and rank higher.

Don’t Overlook Meta Titles & Descriptions

The main purpose of meta titles and descriptions are to tell users what your pages are about at a quick glance. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when writing meta titles and descriptions:

Keep title tag under 60 characters and descriptions under 160 characters
Include target keywords
Avoid keyword stuffing and try to keep it short and sweet
Write unique meta titles and descriptions for each page
Try to include a call to action

URL Structure: Keep it Short and Sweet

Having a proper URL structure is important for both users and search engines to get an idea of what a page will be about. According to Backlinko, shorter URL’s tend to rank slightly higher than longer URL’s, so try to keep your URL as short as possible. In addition to keeping your URL short, including keywords in your URL helps increase your rankings. Lastly, try to avoid adding words like “and” and “the” into your URL structure. These are stop words and not only add to the URL length, but do not add any value whatsoever.

Understand What Your Users are Looking For

Behind every query, there is search intent. Aligning your website content with the search intent of users is vital to appearing higher on SERP. This is where blogs and videos lend a helping hand.

When a user searches for “how to optimize for SEO,” you want to make sure that query is included in your content so you can easily satisfy that search query.

There are four main types of search queries:

Informational
Navigational
Commercial
Transactional

Informational search queries are just users seeking information. Navigational queries are users searching for something specific, like “Mason Interactive.” Commercial queries are users looking to buy something, but they need more information before they do so. And finally, transactional queries are when users are ready to purchase a product or service.

Making sure that your SEO content aligns with a users’ search intent is what will get eyeballs to your site. You cannot optimize for “buy SEO online class” and only offer the user reasons why SEO is essential to your site’s success. In layman’s terms, you need to optimize for what your target audience is searching for.

Optimize Page Speed for a Better UX

Page speed and load time is a major Google ranking factor, as well as an important factor for visitors to your website. If a page takes too long to load, users will get frustrated and leave, causing your traffic to drop and your bounce rate to increase.

Here are some suggestions to increase your pagespeed:

Image compression (see below)
Delete unused/unnecessary plugins and widgets
Reduce your redirects (if possible)
Minify JavaScript & CSS

Images Can Make or Break Your Site

Having images on your site is a great way to add a visual element while also grabbing the attention of your visitors. However, images can take up a lot of space on your site, causing it to slow down. Here are the best practices for image optimization on your site:

JPEG for photographs, PNG for text images, or WebP
Image compression
Image alt text
Lazy-Load images

All of the above listed image optimization techniques can make a huge difference in your site speed and performance, as well as help your site rankings.

Your Internal Link Structure is the Backbone of Your Site

Internal links help to establish your site’s infrastructure and page hierarchy. The best way to utilize internal linking is to first identify your top performing pages and your pages that need a little TLC. The best way to leverage internal linking is by adding links from your strongest pages to your weakest pages. Always make sure that your internal links are working properly and not broken, because broken internal links can get penalized by Google and cause your rankings to fall.

Website Security is a Must!

Making sure your site is secure is not only important for SEO results, but important to visitors to your site as well. You want to make sure that whatever information visitors share on your page stays private. Moving your site to a secure server (HTTPS vs. HTTP) is the best way to make sure information stays private.
The main difference between HTTP and HTTPS is the SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate. This certificate encrypts user information and translates the data into code. With an SSL certificate, even if a user’s information was stolen, it would be encrypted and not understood. In addition, being on a secure server is one of the factors Google uses to rank your site on SERP.

Speak Search Engine’s Language by Using Schema Markup

Schema is microdata that you can add to your HTML code to improve the way your site is read by search engine crawlers.

Schema is microdata that you can add to your HTML code to improve the way your site is read by search engine crawlers. Many people get confused or scared by the term ‘schema’, so here is an easy way of understanding it.

The whole point of introducing schema into your code is to make it easier for Google to crawl your site. Schema is Google’s preferred language, so search engines will be able to understand the information on the page much better and in turn rank it higher in SERP.

How Can Mason Interactive Help?

At Mason Interactive, we offer a wide range of search engine optimization services including technical onsite optimization, site speed optimization, competitive keyword targeting, and much more. Contact us for a free marketing analysis and to see how we can help improve your website’s SEO.

It should come to no surprise that search engines and platforms like Google are constantly evolving and making changes to improve user experience with quality content across the online universe [database]. The technology giant Google released a new algorithm update on May 4th that has affected some industries more than others. Mason Interactive Director of SEO, Jenna Vaccaro, walks us through a high-level overview of what the update means and how your business might be affected.

“Most of Google’s core updates prioritize getting rid of web pages that have poor quality content,” Jenna says. “The first thing their intelligence is scanning through are websites with blurbs of content that are spammy* and not authoritative.”

* spammy: denoting, relating to, or constituting Internet spam.

We are talking about the biggest areas of change, and that means for the better or for worse. Websites focused on fitness, holistic medicine, banking and financial industries were affected the most.

“In this algorithm update, Google is scanning through all of these websites and they’re giving less priority to the ones that are spammy and more priority to the ones that they are deeming as more authoritative and credible from a content standpoint.”

Local content is also being prioritized. “If there’s spammy content on a website that has locations in 50 states and a page built out for each city or state, Google flushed out content that doesn’t offer information to the user.” If you have a physical address or storefront, you might see some drops.

Have you seen a dip in traffic? Contact us for a high-level SEO audit

While some industries and verticals have been affected more than others, we are not seeing a huge change in e-commerce, and our direct-to-consumer clients don’t appear to have been impacted.

“If you are experiencing a dip in traffic, and it tailored off at or around May 4th, you should be able to monitor this in [Google] Analytics,” Jenna says. “You can check the dip in traffic and visibility in keywords, and if that happened, there’s a few things you can do to track what to fix.” Thin content is an issue, and Jenna recommends a content audit of pages that don’t get traffic or don’t have much meaning to the users. “It’s always better to get rid of this content and start over, or condense a bunch of content into one authoritative piece.”

Having a blog post just to have a blog post from 10 years ago versus focusing on the pages that actually bring in quality traffic is just one of the ways you can think about your website content going forward.

Top 3 things to consider:

Thin content
Technical related issues
Topics based on user search intent