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64 August 2014 | beautystorebusiness.com BEST PRACTICES Go with a frequently updated blog that offers truly useful content. Google has gotten much better at sniffing out web- sites that post reams of robotic-like text, which are artificially stuffed with dozens of keywords. It's punishing websites that engage in the practice accordingly, experts say. Instead, "Look for subject matter that is going to be engaging to your targeted demographic, but that will also establish your business as lead- ing authority in your industry," says Toby Gonzales, revenue manager for FBiFrames. com, a firm specializing in Facebook marketing. Gonzales says that by mak- ing changes to his own blog—which now includes daily posts with what he says are valuable insights coupled with gripping images—he has seen a 51% spike in visits from people using Google's search engine. Adds Esposito: "A fashion or beauty trend blog has to be updated constantly. That's the nature of the business. In our space, content, reviews, vlogs and blogs need to be in constant motion because as soon as you update your page, a new product is already hitting the market." Gokhan Erkavun, managing director of Beauty Bridge (beautybridge.com), agrees: "In our case, we believe two to three good quality articles a week give enough signals to Google that we have fresh content and valuable assets for its search results." There's one important caveat. Be sure the person tasked with maintaining your blog is up to the task. "A business should just approach the situation with some logic and common sense. Do you have enough material to blog about that people would actually be interested in reading?" warns Jay Correia, CEO of DreamCo Design (dreamcodesign.com), a Web-design firm. If not, Correia adds, foisting a dull-as-dishwater blog on an unsuspecting public can be "a compete waste of time"—both for the author company and its website visitors. HELP GOOGLE OUT Google can track you as an author. It gives preferential treatment to posts from authors it knows, tracks and moni- tors. Get on the goliath's good side in this regard by creating a Google+ page for yourself (plus.google.com/ getstarted/getstarted?fww=1). Then stop by Google's authorship page (plus.google. com/authorship) to establish your author credentials. Once you've got an author- ship page, be sure to offer a link from this page to every article you ever publish on the Web. This ongoing self-cataloguing enables Google to easily track what you're doing, verify that you're a legitimate generator of valuable online content and consequently ensure that your website achieves higher rankings in search-engine returns. As a bonus, your Google+ author photo will appear in the Google search-engine returns that Google delivers to people searching for the topics you write about. (For the complete techie guide to Google authorship, visit searchengineland. com/the-definitive-guide-to-google- authorship-markup-123218) USE KEYWORDS JUDICIOUSLY While Google is punishing websites that engage in obvious keyword "stuffing"— that is, repeating the same word or phrase over and over again ad nauseam throughout an article or post—it does still rely on keywords to identify content. Essentially, that means you should plug a keyword or phrase into your headline, subhead, opening sentence of your text and in the captions for your multimedia. "Put the most important keyword phrase as close to the beginning of the headline and repeat it somewhere toward the top of the piece," explains Sarah Skerik, vice president of social media for PR Newswire (prnewswire.com). "Search engines do place more weight on words and phrases found at the top of the page." Correia agrees: "Well written, compelling, original and useful content that contains the keywords/phrases that are important for the business is an absolute must." Even so, be careful not to overdo it. "Keyword stuffing is one of the cardinal sins in Google's webmaster guidelines," Ahern says. "The reason for this is that when you focus on keyword stuffing you take your focus away from where it should be, providing a quality experience for your users. This gets you punished on two fronts. First, Google's going to see the keyword stuffing and flag the content as artificial, which is going to start dropping you in the rank- ings. Second, any users that do find you are going to have a lower-quality experi- ence and be less likely to contact you and become clients." Kim Snyder, owner of OverallBeauty.com, agrees: "'Keyword stuffing' is such a old way to do things. That will cause the search engines to see your site as a spam site." GO DEEP WITH CONTENT Google currently frowns on websites that post short, mindless pieces of throwaway text that have no real value; and rewards sites posting content of real depth and insight, says Courtney Dale, communica- tions director at Wisdek (wisdek.ca), an online marketing agency. Essentially, aim for pieces that are 1,000 words minimum Google's Netherlands facility is one of many that helps implement the ever-secret algorithm by which Google ranks search-engine returns. You can easily add a pro blog to your website with free Wordpress software—an industry standard blog solution. Images courtesy of Google G o o g l e S E O - W h a t s W o r k i n g N o w f o r B e a u t y R e t a i l e r s . i n d d 6 4 Google SEO- Whats Working Now for Beauty Retailers.indd 64 6 / 2 6 / 1 4 4 : 4 5 P M 6/26/14 4:45 PM