This past March, Google rolled out another core algorithm update, which has had the SEO community buzzing about how it will impact website rankings. While the full effects of this update have likely not been observed, it is important to understand that measures can be taken to minimize the impact of Google’s ongoing algorithm updates.

Understanding The Foundation of Google’s Search Algorithm

With each update, Google is constantly refining its algorithms to ensure that the most relevant and authoritative content is featured prominently in search results.

Search intent and website relevance create the bedrock upon which Google’s search engine lays. Google has become the largest search engine in the world because it consistently delivers relevant, high-quality search results to users. Google uses these algorithm updates to better analyze, understand, and rank website content so that it can continue providing pertinent content to users.

If you’re worried that your search rankings will drop as a result of this algorithm update and other subsequent updates, fear not. There are many digital content strategies and useful tools to help you maintain and improve your rankings.

SEO Best Practices to Improve Your Google Rankings

Keeping up with Google algorithm updates is essential for any website or business that wants to stay competitive in the ever-changing digital landscape. This means that it’s important for website owners and marketers to keep on top of these changes so they can adjust their strategies accordingly. Below, we offer SEO best practices and steps you can take to ensure your content remains visible and relevant.

Prioritize High-Quality Website Content

Develop a thorough understanding of what your target market is researching, and create content aimed at educating, captivating, and providing solutions for their questions.

There are plenty of tools available (like SEMrush) that can help you find appropriate keywords to base your website content around. Remember, Google Search uses keywords at the core of its algorithm, so understanding the specific language consumers use and implementing it on your website will prove most successful.

Optimize For User Experience

Having relevant content isn’t enough if your website takes too long to load. Google wants users to be able to access information quickly. So ensure that page load time is fast, buttons and forms are accessible on mobile devices, and the website’s layout is conducive to a strong customer experience.

Set Up Google Alerts or Follow Google Search Relay on Twitter

Constantly monitoring the hundreds of updates that occur every year isn’t realistic; however, Google Alerts can notify you when a core algorithm update is scheduled to take place so that you have time to prepare and adapt. Simply go to google.com/alerts and enter keywords like “Google algorithm” to receive emails about when these alerts will take place. Another option is to follow Google Search Central on Twitter. This account regularly reports noteworthy changes occurring within the Google world.

Using Search Console, Google Analytics, and SEMrush To Regularly Monitor Rankings

Using these tools to monitor website traffic and conversions, as well as keyword rankings, can further assist you in staying ahead of Google’s algorithm updates. You can use these tools to see whether there are dips or spikes in website activity, which can be indicative of an algorithm update. These SEO monitoring tools can provide you with a better understanding of whether your content is compelling and offer insights into improving your content for better performance.

How to Rank Higher on Google with MARION Integrated Marketing

Ultimately a strong SEO strategy is the only way to maintain good rankings with Google. Therefore, developing strong SEO practices is paramount to showing up on Google Search regardless of an algorithm update. For more on SEO and marketing best practices, visit the MARION blog.

Contact MARION today to learn more about keeping up with SEO algorithm updates.

A marketing agency is a business that helps organizations increase the sales of their products and services. Futhermore, there are two ways to categorize marketing agencies: in-house and external. The former deals with the company’s marketing efforts internally, while the latter works with the company’s marketing externally.

Additionally, there are three main types of digital advertising agencies: performance-based, traditional, and integrated. Performance-based agencies provide services like search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising; traditional agencies offer services like print or broadcast media; integrated agencies provide both performance-based and traditional marketing services. So, which one is best for your business? Keep reading to find out.

Why Hire a Local SEO Agency in Your Area?

If you’re looking for internet marketing services in your area, these are a few of the biggest reasons why you might want to hire a local SEO agency, regardless of your industry. 

• SEO Optimization: Agencies would be able to understand the nuances of your industry and help with local optimization.
• Keyword Research: Agency experts know what kind of keywords and key phrases to target and how to rank well on search engines so that your business will be seen by more people who are looking for products or services like yours.
• Local Knowledge: Digital marketing agencies near you will know what searches and trends people in your area are searching for. You also can’t beat face-to-face interactions.

How to Find the Best Local SEO Agency for Your Business in Houston

A local SEO marketing agency will have in-depth knowledge of your industry, be close to you geographically, and have the dedication to work with you long-term. The right agency experts will help you build a digital content strategy that dominates your industry.

So, what are the best practices for finding a marketing agency that can help your business grow? Of course, it’s important to find an agency that understands your industry, has strong local connections in Houston, and has the patience to work with you for years to come. But how do you know which one is right for you?

How Much Should You Budget for an Online Marketing Campaign?

Marketing costs can seem daunting. But it is essential to budget correctly so you can be successful at marketing your business online.

The first step to determining your marketing budget is to look at your company’s revenue and growth goals. If you are expanding, there should be an equal investment in growth and marketing if you want the business to grow exponentially.

After assessing growth goals, you need to take into account the cost of customer acquisition. Customers are expensive — it costs about five times more than what it takes to retain a customer through marketing campaigns or by providing excellent service.

Finding the Best Marketing Agency in South Texas

If you are looking for a top marketing agency in South Texas, look no further. You have come to the right place! You will find all kinds of information about marketing agencies here—from tips for getting started with marketing services in Houston to online marketing strategies with the biggest impact on ROI, top questions to ask a branding agency, and more.

In conclusion, the best way to choose a marketing agency that’s perfect for your business is by following these simple steps. First, ask them about what they do for clients with similar businesses to yours or who have an equivalent budget size. Then ask them about their experience working with your particular market or industry. Finally, see if they offer free consultations so you can meet them in person and see if it’s a match!

Ready to hire and work with the best internet marketing agency in Houston? MARION has been helping Texas businesses advertise big since 1981. We work with our clients to manage their entire online presence, from social media and web design to email marketing and reputation management.

Contact our team today and schedule a free consultation to learn more about our services.

The world of search engine optimization (SEO) can be overwhelming for those who aren’t accustomed to it. The number of tools, strategies and changes by Google is virtually limitless. If you’re new to SEO, where do you start? Here are five SEO tools we think are among the best for monitoring your website’s performance and making improvements.

Why Measure SEO Performance?

There’s an adage out there that says, “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” While cliché at this point, it rings true. If you’re just improving your website without a benchmark or goal, you’ll only experience success if you’re lucky. For the rest of us unlucky ones, we can actively improve our website’s performance based on specific metrics like organic traffic, search engine rankings and conversion rates.

You see, most of what’s visible to your prospects and website visitors is content. And, according to HubSpot’s Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2021, “the majority of companies (67%) use organic traffic to measure their content success.” Why? Because organic traffic (as opposed to paid or direct traffic) reflects how valuable your content is to your prospects.

So, how do you get your valuable content in front of the right eyes? These days, a good SEO tool is really a requirement. Fortunately, we have some recommendations.

The Best SEO Tools for Performance Monitoring

Any “best” list is going to be subjective, but the truly best tools will show up again and again on recommendation lists or articles. That being said, here are the tools that we’ve seen over the years that have had a demonstrable impact on improving SEO performance for websites.

1. SEMrush

Are there other better all-in-one marketing tools out there? Maybe. But few software alternatives come close to SEMrush when it comes to SEO. After all, search engine optimization is SEMrush’s bread and butter. It’s the company’s specialty. (Just look at the company name. “SEM” refers to “search engine marketing!”) If you’re going to try an SEO tool, we recommend starting with SEMrush.

• Pros: Robust, deep and packed with features. Extremely helpful customer service team.
• Cons: Fairly expensive and a bit of a learning curve to use.
• Best SEO Features: Keyword research, position tracking, organic research, traffic analytics, backlinks, keyword gaps, competitor comparisons, social media management, content marketing suggestions, local SEO and much more.

2. Moz

Moz lost a bit of its luster and appeal when Rand Fishkin exited the company, but it remains a solid SEO option. One of the best parts about Moz is that many features are free! You just need to sign up for an account and there are limits to queries you can submit. But if you have a single business or don’t check in on SEO metrics very often, this might be a good starter tool for you.

• Pros: Moz also excels at backlink data and has a proprietary Domain Authority score that is a standard in the industry.
• Cons: You must upgrade to a premium/paid account to use all features.
• Best SEO Features: Domain analysis, keyword explorer, link explorer.

3. HubSpot

I admittedly have a soft spot for HubSpot, as I’ve obtained dozens of certifications from the company and have used their tools for many years. When it comes to user experience and customer service, HubSpot can’t be beat. While it’s true that HubSpot isn’t an SEO-exclusive tool, it does have many SEO-friendly features that will help you improve your website’s performance. If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool with plenty of SEO features, HubSpot is a can’t-miss option.

• Pros: Easy to learn, with top-notch UX/UI. Friendly, helpful customer service team.
• Cons: Expensive (though you get what you pay for). SEO data isn’t as rich or accurate as SEMrush or Google Analytics (based on the traffic sources the tool references), but you still get valuable insights for improvement.
• Best SEO Features: Content optimization recommendations, topic clustering, robust reporting and valuable SEO-related tools like blogging, landing pages and marketing automation.

4. Screaming Frog

If you have technical aptitude and some SEO experience, Screaming Frog is a tool that will allow you to dive deeper than others on this list. Screaming Frog basically crawls your site in a way similar to search engine robots, helping you identify crucial issues like improper tags, meta information that’s too short or long, missing alt text on images and more.

• Pros: Rich, deep data, which is easily exportable/sharable.
• Cons: You’re limited to 500 pages on the free plan. May be too much for new SEOs.
• Best SEO Features: Site crawling, integrations with other SEO tools, advanced metrics.

5. Google Analytics

Last, but probably first in the list of tools you should consider is Google Analytics. There really is no replacement for the data you’ll see straight from the source with GA. Customizing reports and diving deep into advanced metrics is attainable with Google Analytics, though you definitely need to know what you’re doing.

• Pros: Most accurate data for organic traffic from Google; highly customizable. Integrates with most SEO tools.
• Cons: Very steep learning curve; not ideal for new SEOs. Permissions/security can be annoying.
• Best SEO Features: Visitor behavior tracking, identifying top pages/content, annotations for big changes, customizable tracking and reports.

Bonus: LinkWhisper

We’re huge fans of this final SEO tool, which is ideal for monitoring links in particular. You can easily build reports, identify broken links, set up auto-linking settings for blog posts (limiting them to one per post) and more. If you’re looking to automate the internal and external linking part of SEO, LinkWhisper is worth checking out. (It works with most WordPress-hosted websites.)

Should You Partner with an SEO Agency?

With all these amazing search engine optimization tools available, why would you need to partner with a marketing agency for your SEO? Well, if you notice from some of the cons above, many tools require search engine optimization knowledge to get the most out of them that you can. (This is why several companies like HubSpot and Google offer certifications.)

Additionally, some of the more expensive tools may be out of reach for your company and its budget. An agency, however, may already be on an agency plan and you’ll be able to enjoy the amazing benefits of the tools without the premium price tag. Other benefits include easy integrations, more precise reporting and flexibility.

If you’re interested in learning more about these tools or how we can help with your SEO efforts, contact us today.