Keeping a tight schedule is generally considered to be a good thing. We associate people who schedule their lives well in advance with being in control and organized. It’s certainly the case that having a full and well-planned schedule can help to make sure that you stay on task and not miss out on important meetings. But it’s also true that being too scheduled can have a negative impact on your ability to get things done.

Generally speaking, if you have schedule a meeting for a set length of time, it will go that length of time even if it doesn’t need to take that long. People want to feel like they blocked out a set amount of time for a reason and they will find ways to use the time — even if the use of time isn’t productive. This can lead to endless meetings where you are accomplishing a lot less than you should be with your time.

One way to solve this is to keep your meetings short — perhaps a half-hour in length. This gives enough time to discuss what needs to be discussed without inviting meetings to run on incessantly. If something needs more than 30 minutes, plan ahead and schedule multiple meetings. This will force you to address the problems in bite-sized chunks, which can be helpful in tackling complex issues.

You should also schedule time for yourself in between meetings to do something like take a walk outside of go get a coffee down the street. You might say to yourself that you are going to “find time” between meetings to take a break but it’s easy to let that time slip away. If you put breaks on your calendar, you are more likely to take them.

Scheduling phone calls the same way that you schedule meetings is a great way to avoid losing time to idle chit-chat. Unless it’s something urgent that needs to be dealt with immediately, you will almost always be able to schedule a call for later in the day. This gives you time to research the issue and be informed before having a conversation and it also sets parameters for how long the call should go.

The key to any successful relationship is communication and this is true when it comes to the relationship between a freelancer and who contracts with them for their services. When a person knows what to expect from their freelancer, they have the right basis for evaluating their success. It also gives a freelancer clear parameters to operate under since they know what their client is expected to receive.

This is especially true when it comes to the world of online content marketing. When you work with a freelancer or an outside content marketing service like eVisible, it’s critical that you set your goals before the project starts and communicate regularly with the outside freelancer or firm to make sure that objectives are being met. Expecting that they “know what they are doing” and are taking care of everything perfectly on their own is typically an invitation for headaches down the road.

When you are interviewing potential agencies or freelancers to help you with your content marketing, make sure that they are being realistic in presenting the services they provide. You don’t want to hire someone only to realize that they can’t deliver what you thought they would at the start of your relationship. Ask tough questions and don’t always be limited by talking about “best case scenarios” — find out what they think are the obstacles to the success of a content marketing campaign and what they plan to do if these roadblocks occur while they are working for you.

Ultimately, freelancers and content marketing agencies thrive when they are able to end projects with satisfied customers. This comes from setting expectations that are realistic but will also meet the marketing needs of their clients. In order to do this, it’s important for clients to be very clear about what they want to accomplish with their content marketing. Just saying that you want “better content” isn’t enough — you need to know what goals you want to use the content to achieve and have a way to communicate this clearly with the freelancer or agency.

Whether you are creating your own content for marketing purposes or working with an content marketing service such as eVisible, the steps that your content takes between the first draft and being published are critical. It’s in this process where you can fine tune your language, be more concise with your editing and ensure that you are hitting all of your key points. The difference between a good piece of content and a great piece of content often comes in the editing and revision process.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you review your content after the first draft but before it goes live to the world:

Read the Draft Out Loud: Reading your work out loud — even to yourself — will give you a better understanding about how the text flows and if it has the right tone. In addition, reading out loud is a great way to catch typos (such as missing or misused words) that might slip through while re-reading it on paper.

Use the Proper Amount of Keywords: Just like Goldilocks, you want to find a balance of keywords in your content that is “just right” — enough that is impacts your organic search engine results but not so much that it begins to seem overstuffed (which can lead to your content being marked as spam by Google). A good rule of thumb is to aim for about 75 words of text for every keyword phrase used.

Get an Outside Perspective: It’s very easy for you to become insular when dealing with your own content. After you’ve written and edited a piece of copy enough times, it can become difficult to tell if it’s good or not. The best way to solve this problem is to have someone from outside your organization read your content. This will give you a different perspective from someone who can tell you if the writing connects with an “outsider.”

Use Image Alt Tags: One of the most important things you can do with your content from an SEO perspective is to make sure you are using Image Alt tags. This is the code inside of an image tag that will display if an image will not load on a person’s screen for whatever reason. Search engines such as Google consider it a positive for images to have alt image text.

Aggressively Promote Social Media Sharing: After you’ve created great content, you want your readers to share it with friends and co-workers. So make it easy for them to do this! Make sure that your content has sharing “buttons” to let people quickly share your stories to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or other relevant social media sites. You can also optimize your content for social media sharing by coding in Open Graph tags and Twitter Cards.

When undertaking an SEO campaign, most people look at their content first. While this is valuable, you also need to consider the first thing that a person will see before going to one of your web pages: the link. It’s important to analyze your SEO page titles in order to make sure that you are maximizing their effectiveness and power to boost your SEO rankings. Here are a few things you need to look at with your URLs:

Work to Create Shorter and Easier to Read URLs: Making the URL of your pages or blog posts easy to understand means that readers seeing the link will have a better sense of what to expect when they click. This also makes the links more attractive to search engines. Including keywords that you want to rank for as part of your URL is still an effective way to increase your rankings. You still want to avoid overstuffing your URLs with keywords — which, like other content, can make it look “spammy” in the eyes of search engines.

Along with easier to read URLs, you also want to keep your URLs as short as possible. This issue isn’t with search engines but with your readers. It’s been proven that people don’t like to read, copy or share longer URLs (over 100 characters).

Single Domains and Subdomains Are the Best: We’ve repeatedly seen the results — when someone fixes their website architecture so all of their content is in a subfolder instead of a subdomain, their SEO results improve. You should also avoid URLs that have multiple folders, since this can create lengthy URLs that appear to have many levels.

Canonicalize Similar URLs: Another way to improve your search engine rankings is to review if you have instances of multiple URLs with similar content. If you do, use a rel=canonical tag to canonicalize the similar URLs.

Avoid Tracking Parameters: Having tracking IDs at the end of the URLs is not as common — or necessary — as it used to be. You may need them in some cases to help track clicks for specific campaigns, however, so use your judgement to determine if the benefits outweigh having lengthy URLs.

Match Your Titles and URLs As Closely As Possible: People want to know the content of their stories before they read them. Keeping your URLs as closely related to the title of your page or blog post as possible will make sure readers know exactly what it’s about just from the link. However, you typically don’t need to worry about using connecting words from your title such as “and,” “or” or “but.”

Watch Out for Awkward Punctuation Characters in URLs: Many characters that are used in titles can create link breaks in URLs or have trouble being recognized by browsers. This can include empty spaces or characters such as “&” or “#.” Try to avoid using special characters in URLs and stick to basic letters and numerals. As noted, avoid spaces in URLs if possible and use dashes or underscores instead.

Keep Redirections to a Minimum: Most users won’t have a problem if a link they click on redirects to a different site. Things start to get dicey when a URL redirects two or more times before getting to its final page. Search spiders might get confused and readers might see this as being “spammy.”

Don’t Use Hashtags to Create Separate Content: There are exceptions to this rule, but generally it’s cleaner to have a fresh URL than to use a hashtag so that someone can jump to a specific point within a page.

Be Careful of Inconsistent Case Sensitivity: This is especially true for Linux/UNIX servers, which can interpret separate cases as separate URLs. Take steps to redirect or canonicalize URLs that use an incorrect case to the right one.

There is perhaps no piece of meta data on a web page that is more important that a title tag. This is the short description that tells both users and search engines what a web page’s content is about. One bit of evidence highlighting the importance of title tags comes from Kristine Schachinger of Search Engine World, who wrote that title tags are “like the title of the chapter of a book” and “the most important single tag on your page.”

It’s impossible to do effective search engine optimization without paying close attention to your title tags. This is particularly true with Google’s recent modifications to its results page layout, which places additional emphasis on title tags. With this in mind, what are some of the ways that you can leverage title tags to your advantage? Here are 10 of the hottest tips:

Grab Attention With Your Title Tag From the Beginning: Much like with a headline, you want to grab people’s attention from the start of your title tag. Use a strong, declarative statement to catch the eye of a reader.

Make Title Tags Long Enough to Explain the Page: Even if the description is too long to fully display on the search engine results page (SERP), Google may still be using all of it to determine the topic of your page.

Short Title Tags Are Wasted Opportunities: When you have a short title tag, you lose the chance to fully explain your page. You also run the risk of Google “filling in the blank” with extra content.

Be Bold: Having part of your title tag in bold will catch the reader’s eye. You can do this by including phrases that customers are likely to search for in your tag. Google will automatically bold the phrase that is searched for in the result.

Leverage Thematic Search Results: Google now can tell what you are searching for and delivers results based on this — not necessarily just based on your keywords. Using this information can help you to craft a broad title tag that can return many Google results.

Include a Call to Action in Your Title Tag: Just asking people to “click here” isn’t enough; you need to let people know what they expect to get out of clicking on your link. Tell them what the end result of their click will be ahead of time.

Do What Your Competitors Aren’t: In order to stand out from the competition, sometimes you need to take an approach that stands out from them. Review your competition’s title tags and try to approach yours from a different angle.

Give Specific, Real-Time Data in Your Title Tag: You can program title tags to include dynamic content related to searches. This might include information on how much of a certain product is available in a local area.

Don’t Forget About Your Brand: Even when you are posting links to products, it’s important to include your brand name. This helps to ensure that you rank for your brand and that you avoid possible SEO headaches.

This All Might Not Matter: Google will give results based on what it thinks that users are looking for, which can mean that it will give your homepage title tag over your individual page’s title tag in the SERP for any number of reasons. You’ll need to experiment to see which strategies avoid this happening to your pages.

Title tags are just one of the many ways you can improve your search engine rankings through meta content. Find out more about how eVisible integrates meta content into our SEO services for clients by viewing our approach to SEO success. Have more questions about best SEO practices? Find out answers by reading our FAQ on SEO.

It’s extremely important to include frequent content updates as part of your small business search engine optimization strategy. Google places a high emphasis on fresh content in rewarding sites with higher search engine placements. However, many small businesses struggle to come up with content on a regular basis because they lack the resources or ability to write and create content consistently.

However, content marketing isn’t out of your reach as a small business. With the right planning and foresight, you can manage your content marketing process and create pieces that will accomplish two goals: increase your reputation with Google and attract new customers. Here are some steps you’ll want to take as you building your content marketing strategy.

Make a Content Calendar

One way to combat this is to create a content calendar that lays out a month’s worth of content ahead of time. This saves you the headaches associated with feeling rushed to create content and lets you work ahead. If you have content on a calendar, you are less likely to not do it because you are busy with other tasks.

Do Your Research

Want to know what you should be writing about? Find out what is already popular. You can do research through Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to see what sites people are visiting and the type of content that is on those sites. You can also visit social bookmarking sites and do research to see topics that are getting buzz on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

Understand Newsjacking

If a story is trending on Twitter or Facebook, chances are people are interested in reading different takes on it. Be agile and ready to post stories about trending topics – even if your take is different than the mainstream. Trendsmap is a great resource for understanding the topics that are generating interest in localized areas.

Create Visual Content

You don’t have to be stuck doing nothing but writing. Infographics, photo slideshows and other types of visual content are very eye-catching and viral. Utilizing visual content can help you get out of a “content rut” and make your content stand out from other text-based items.

Get Interactive With Surveys

Web users want to be engaged and make connections with content. One way to do that is to survey your audience about trends in your industry or their preferences. You can use this to generate even more content and get some outstanding market research – something that always comes in handy when you are doing marketing for small business.

Try Video Blogging

You don’t need a fancy production studio to have your own video blog. Modern cameras and even smartphones have high-end video cameras. With some basic video editing equipment, you can post to YouTube and reach out to a new potential audience.

Look at Repurposing Content

If you still don’t have time to create new content, be creative with existing content. Take lots of information from different stories on a similar topic and turn it into an overview. Or revisit an old blog post and update it with new information.

Few aspects of being a webmaster or owner of a website are more terrifying than the prospect of moving your site – either to a new URL or to a new server while keeping the same URL. In both cases, there’s great potential for problems to occur which can limit your ability to be crawled and indexed correctly and seriously damage your search engine optimization campaign.

In an effort to help webmasters who are undertaking a site move, Google has recently published an in-depth guide to moving a website. Whether you are moving your site without or with a URL change, Google has identified four key steps that are critical to successfully migrating your site.

Site Moves Without a URL Change

1. Set Up the New Site’s Hosting Infrastructure. Copy your current site to your new site and then do rigorous testing to ensure that it behaves correctly. This includes creating a private testing environment for the new site (complete with IP-restricted access), public testing on a beta site or live testing on a limited capacity. You’ll also need to check that Googlebot can access your new infrastructure using the Fetch as Google function in Webmaster Tools, review the Time to Live setting for your DNS and review the Webmaster Tools verification.
2. Move the Site. Get rid of any disallows in your robots.txt file and update your DNS settings to your new web hosting provider.
3. Monitor Traffic. Check the server logs on both your old and new site for any unusual activity. Use DNS checking tools and monitor crawl stats and errors.
4. Shut Down Your Old Site. You can do this after your traffic there reaches zero.

Site Moves With a URL Change

1. Set Up the New Site’s Hosting Infrastructure. Move your site to a new CMS and transfer over any images and files you currently host. Create your robots.txt file and create 404 or 410 error pages for any pages that will be deleted on the new site. Make sure that everything is ready to go with Google Webmaster Tools on your new site.
2. Perform URL mapping. You need to make sure that all the links on your current site are linked to URLs on your new site. Determine your current URLs, create a map of how they will link to your new URLs and then update the URL details. This update can include annotation, internal links and sitemaps. You’ll also need to do 301 redirects.
3. Move the Site. Google recommends moving everything on your site at once instead of in pieces. Remove all robots.txt directives from your old site and make sure the robots.txt file allows for full crawling. Go to Webmaster Tools and submit a change of address. Redirect users from the old site to the new site and include the old and new sitemaps on the new site – this signals redirects to crawlers.
4. Monitor Traffic. Use Google Webmaster Tools and other tools to review traffic and see if the new URLs are being indexed, crawled and search for by bots and users.

These are just some of the step necessary to properly migrate a website. eVisible’s Webmaster Services can help you avoid costly mistakes when moving your site, no matter how complex the move. Contact us today for a consultation.

In the modern online world, all businesses are global. Customers from around the world can visit your site, browse your goods and services and contact you for more information or place an order. When you construct your website and create an SEO strategy, it’s important to consider international factors, especially if you plan on doing a significant amount of business with customers from outside of the United States.

Considering the international reach of your site allows you to accomplish two things: you can avoid issues that might harm your site’s SEO in other countries and you can take advantage of opportunities presented by the international reach of your site. Businesses of all sizes can benefit from taking a worldly approach to their SEO audit and considering global elements. Here are some of the things you need to check when evaluating your global website from an SEO standpoint:

Targeting Languages vs. Countries

The world is increasingly becoming a melting pot, and this extends to languages. Many countries have more than one official language. Other countries – such as the US – don’t have an official language but might have many different languages spoken within its borders. Depending on your business goals, you will want your sub-directories, sub-domains and ccTLDs to either be targeted toward specific countries or specific languages, and you’ll want to have a consistent and simple way of doing this throughout your website structure.

In addition, you’ll want to make sure that you remain consistent through on-screen and meta content if you are structuring your pages by country or by language. For example, if you are targeting for languages, you don’t want to have country flags be the icon for making a selection.

Optimizing Structure for International Sites

Each international version of a website needs to have its structure analyzed thoroughly. Website owners need to make sure that it isn’t overly complex or have unnecessary directories while also making sure that the URL names are clear and in the right language for the target audience.

Alignment, Indexing and Crawling Issues for International Web Versions

To further ensure that your structure is correct on the International version of your website, you need to make sure they are crawled and indexed correctly by search engines such as Google – along with local search engines popular in the regions you are targeting. Make sure that you aren’t block language or country versions through your robots.txt or that you are redirecting all crawlers to one version of your site.

Hreflang Annotations

Incorrect Hreflang annotations can directly impact your international search traffic. You need to make sure that you are using the correct language and country code and that you are correctly cross-referencing similar pages on your site with content for other languages or countries.

Webmaster Tools Geolocation Settings

If you are using sub-directories or sub-domains instead of ccTLDs, use the Geographic Tools in Google Webmaster Tools to make sure that you are targeting the correct countries.

Cross-Checking Content

It’s surprisingly easy to have your localized website content be different than what you expect. Make sure that you check each country- or language-specific website version to make sure that the right content is being displayed.

Avoid Cross Linking

Remember that cross-linking pages on various versions of your site can lead to penalties from Google. Avoid doing this as much as possible.

No matter what size your business, if you need to reach an international audience, eVisible can help. Our Internet marketing firm works with companies of all sizes to find online marketing solutions to expand their reach and attract new customers.