Search Engine Optimization

SEO in 2025 – How to Maximize Search Visibility, Organic Traffic & Returns on Investment

Posted on August 29, 2024 - 3:41 AM by admin

SEO is changing rapidly with evolution in generative AI, evolving algorithms & new search features that are propelling search engines, such as Google & Bing, to improve their search results in order to be more meaningful and personalized for their users. In such times, what should your SEO agency be doing to get you high page visibility?

While affordable SEO services are an important consideration for most businesses looking to boost their search visibility, you should look for an SEO agency that is ready to adapt to search changes in search engine optimization.

How will Generative AI Impact SEO in 2025?

AI Overviews –

AI Overviews, earlier known as search generative experiences or SGE, is one such big change due to search results being triggered by generative search.

We have now seen how Google Search produces an AI overview to provide an AI-generated summary at the top of the search page for many searches. For instance, if I type in ‘transactional or commercial search keywords and zero click searches’ and I see an AI overview right on top, which gives me a pretty good overview of the impact of AI Overview on transactional or commercial keywords:

Notice how there are ‘links cards’ to the right which allow users to dig deeper into the topic. These are the websites that provide specific guidance on this topic, which is one piece of search real estate that websites can aim to occupy. More on this later.

An important note here; AI overview in its current form is new, but Google’s attempt to provide relevant and summarized information has existed for a long time, in the form of People Also Ask (PAA), featured snippets, and Knowledge Graphs.

These are all attempts to show the most relevant and useful information in search results and AI Overview is another feature that is propelled by Generative AI. One big difference between these other features and AI Overview is that AI Overview is getting SEO teams flustered over the potential zero click searches, which we will discuss next.

Zero click Searches –

A much-feared implication of AI overview in the SEO community is that people will reduce the number of clicks to websites in response to the AI-generated overview as the overview will provide a concise and useful answer to the user’s query, thereby reducing the need for open web clicks.

In reality, how has this panned out?

Well, a well-sourced study by Rand Fishkin of SparkToro has found that about 69.1% of Google searches resulted in zero clicks to the open web (meaning, web platforms beyond Google.com). For more information, caveats and data limitations, visit Spark Toro’s blog on zero click searches:

While this appears apocalyptic, in reality there are nuances that we as SEO experts need to be aware of.

Zero click searches will likely affect top-funnel or informational / educational searches.
For transactional or commercial searches, most will click to an open web click. This is because users have a purchase intent and would need to click to a website in order to initiate the purchase or gather more information.
While AI Overview provides a summary that is intended to meet the search intent of the user, it also provides link cards which allow users to dig deeper into the topic by clicking through to the open web.
Not all users will be satisfied with the AI overview and some will go into deeper searches. IN SparkToro’s study, we see 21.4% of users went on to another search.
Finally, as SEO professionals, our aim should be to develop content that can get featured in search features other than organic (website) listing. Getting content impressions on AI overview, link cards, featured snippets, knowledge graphs or PAA boxes are all ways to improve brand recognition and increasing market share.

Should I Be Thinking of CHERP?

CHERP or chat experience results page/position is the new kid on the block. CHERP refers to getting mentions on chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Co-Pilot or many of the gen AI chatbots on the market.

With regards to Google search, CHERP is synonymous with AI Overview. The question we are asking is how can we get mentioned in AI Overview (or other CHERPs) if our audience is searching for us?

Or, if we are not visible in the chat experience results page, where are we appearing in search results? We know that for local searches, 42% of searches click on a local pack result, which is the 3-pack Google Maps result. If you are a local business that is relying purely on organic SERP optimization, you have to consider that 50% of Google users click on their results within 9 seconds of searching.

Which means that if AI Overview, Local Service Ads, Paid Ads and Local 3-pack are dominating the top 50% of search real estate, how likely are users to click on your website link if it’s placed down below in the premium real estate of SERPs? Remember, only 9% of Google searchers make it to the bottom of the first page of the search results.

This means, for SEO in 2025, it is not enough to appear on page 1 of search results, At the very least, if you are a local business, you have to aim for the local 3-pack, which means optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP) and aiming for the coveted top 3 positions in organic search results.

How to Navigate the New SEO Space in 2025?

As Generative AI changes the nature of search results and as Google updates its algorithms to be more meaningful and useful for searchers’ intent, what can an SEO agency do to play in the new landscape?

A good foundational content strategy – A good current SEO base will be your defensive strategy in 2025. This means authoritative content that projects experience, expertise, authority, & trustworthiness (E.E.A.T.) should still be your foundational strategy! Good content allows helps you in multiple ways, including:
1. Good content allows your article or multimedia to be indexed by search engines and drive high value traffic to your website or channel. At Webtage, we have seen at least one-third of our organic traffic generated through high-quality informational blogs that we create that bring together our E.E.A.T. as trustworthy & dependable digital marketing partners for our clients.
2. Great content also helps build great backlinks from authoritative sources in your industry. In 2025, go beyond creating non contextualized backlinks from generic content sites. Instead, use great content that reflects principles of E.E.A.T. to reach out to high authority niche content sites. These backlinks appear to be naturally placed in a piece of content that is authoritative, trustworthy and denotes expertise, which makes these links much more valuable for your organic SERPs.
3. The more often you create and publish good content on your website, the more frequently search bots will crawl your website and this will increase the chances of your content being shown on search results.
4. Good content that is useful for your audience also increases the chances of higher engagement rates and lower bounce rates. The longer your visitors spend time on your website, the more likely your website will rank as an authoritative source of information and higher up in search results

Content that is easy to digest, aligned to user intent, and displays first-person experiences – aka ranch-style SEO content– AI Overview, in particular and CHERPs in general, favors readability. Look at your readability score and summarize your page info into simple sentence structures followed by a clear call to action. This means presenting your information on a page in a clear and easy-to-understand language.

Second, instead of creating a skyscraper SEO strategy that relies on deep, in-depth pillar content, generative AI favors ranch style SEO that breaks down comprehensive pillar content into digestible bits of information that is mapped to varying search intent of a user’s journey.

Third, a critical component of ranch style SEO strategy is creating content that conveys first-hand experience, deep expertise, pointers, evaluation & refinement to make the output useful. This is exactly the kind of content that chatbots cannot spit out. And this is the type of content that you should aim to produce in 2025 that will likely get included in AI Overview, link cards, and other SERP features.

The days of spitting out large volumes of shallow content or AI-generated content is long gone. Even Google’s recent Useful Content update prioritizes websites with content that serve people’s needs and penalizes content that is produced primarily for ranking high on search engines.

Aim for SERP Features – A related offense strategy, that is relevant not only for AI Overview but also other SERP features, such as featured snippets and PAA boxes is the creation of content mapped to user intent, careful selection of keywords, and developing high authority backlinks to appear as search feature.

To aim for featured snippets or PAA boxes, for instance, use a tool such as SEMrush’s keyword magic tool to filter most relevant keywords for your business that have associated featured snippets of PAA appearing in search results.

Once you have the keywords narrowed down, focus on creating content that precisely and concisely answers questions being asked in SERP features. AIOSEO suggests “includes simple elements like using question-based heading tags immediately followed by an answer containing the keyword in the question.” Other suggestions include answering those questions as short and concise paragraphs, creating a list of steps in the form of how-to tutorials, compressing large amounts of data as tables, and adding table of content to your posts and pages that allow for easy to generate list-style featured snippet or PAA answers.

Finally, think about adding schema markups, also known as structured data, to your webpages, especially those pages with frequently-asked questions, user-generatetd content, such as reviews, how-to content pieces and product and service details. These allow search engines to better understand your content and context to allow for better generation of SERP features.

SEO in 2025 will mean more competition and more work for Visibility, Traffic & ROI

While affordability remains an important factor in a company’s decision while selecting SEO vendors, remember in 2025, you want an SEO agency that is ready to unlearn many facets of SEO over the years. No longer a numbers game, the SEO of the future will in many ways support the foundations of good SEO along with the quality and relevance of your content that needs to be concise and easily digestible for your users.

Also important is creative ways of content creation that would increase the chances of getting featured on SERP features through list-style, clear, concise and super organized text.

This means your SEO agency has to stay ahead of the curve and explore creative ways to get you featured prominently on the highly-competitive real estate of search results.

If you are looking for a digital marketing partner with a relentless focus on excellence and a proven track record of success, Webtage is the trusted partner of choice for businesses seeking to dominate their digital landscape and achieve unparalleled growth through SEO. Contact us at 630-277-9521 today!

How to Choose an SEO Agency that will Provide Solid & Sustainable Results

Posted on August 6, 2024 - 1:24 AM by admin

Ever since the rise of the internet and search engines, companies have looked to expand into the online market by increasing their visibility on the internet. One of the most effective ways of increasing visibility online is having a Search Engine Optimization(SEO) strategy that puts your company and its work at the top of search engines. Therefore, it is important to hire an SEO agency that can provide solid and sustainable results.

The web & digital marketing industry is an unregulated industry and clients are unable to differentiate effectively between vendors. As an SEO agency with 12 years of experience, we have unfortunately seen many ‘black-hat SEO techniques’ being adopted that bring clients sub-optimal and unsustainable results. These include poor quality, automated, paid backlinking strategy, chat GPT-generated website content and poor user experience. Usually, these services are offered at dirt-cheap prices and many clients fall for these scammy practices since it’s hard to differentiate a good SEO partner from a scammy one.

So how should you go about choosing an SEO partner?

There are three pillars of a successful SEO strategy and a reputable SEO agency should particularly focus on technical SEO, superior content generation, and solid backlinking. Let’s go through these one-by-one.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO focuses on the functional aspects of a website in order to increase visibility online. This is about creating a good user experience for your website. Why does user experience matter? The main reason for this is that visitors will engage better and spend more time on your website. This tells Google that the website is useful for the visitor and hence your website ranks higher on Google’s algorithm.

A good SEO agency will look for three things in particular to focus on: Largest Contentful Paint(LCP), this measures the loading speed of your website, Interaction to the Next Paint(INP), which measures how interactive your website is to user interactions such as downloads or add to carts, and Cumulative Layout Shift(CLS), which measures how visually stable your website is.

A good SEO agency must also have certain strategies for creating great user experience. Some of the strategies they would look at would be:

Good Load Speed:

An example of a good user experience would be to have the website load quickly instead of it taking time to load. Having a website that takes a while to load on a mobile device or computer could potentially lead to website abandonment and lead to lower engagement. All of this would hurt your search engine rankings.

A word of caution here – be careful of low-performance SEO companies which use page speed as a hook to grab clients. Page speed alone is not enough to vet an SEO partner. Let’s proceed.

Mobile Friendly Site:

Having a website that is also able to fit and operate on a small screen is increasingly important for good SEO. With a large percentage of mobile traffic originating from mobile devices, this step is key to rank high on the search algorithm for Google.

Use Breadcrumb Navigation:

Having breadcrumb navigation allows users to keep track of where they are within a specific website. It increases the chance of your content being discovered, reduces bounce rate, and improves engagement with the website’s content.

Use a Solid On-page keyword strategy:

Each page should have 1-2 primary focus keyphrases that it is optimized for along with 5-10 Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, that are conceptually related to the primary keywords. Mapping your target keywords to pages on your website through this strategy is immensely useful in ranking n search engines. Ensure all target keywords are efficiently mapped to pages and there are no keyword cannibalization, that is, two or more pages are not competing for the same keywords.

Superior Content Generation

This is perhaps the most obvious quality to look for in an SEO agency – do they create great content that will be favorable to people online? However, this warrants a further look.

What are some of the ways in which a good SEO agency goes about creating high quality content?

Creating Relevant Content:

Creating content that is relevant will be more appealing to users. This starts with having some expertise on the topic or being able to do deep research. Then, it helps to research what topics are already written about online and find any topics people haven’t talked about. If the topic being written about is relevant, then you can dive deep into the content and have contextual material to make an article or a video.

Satisfy User Intent:

Google is capable of categorizing content based on what the content is about. It can be classified as people, organizations, concepts, etc. Using these classifications, Google then separates them into one of four categories: informational, navigational, transactional, and commercial. This is important for content creation because the specific key words used in articles and the content purpose should be aligned so that when the user searches the key word, the content of the article matches what the user wanted to read about.

Create Original Content:

An agency’s commitment to using original content for articles is key to high SEO. In the age of ChatGPT, high quality content that is taken from an individual’s perspective and expertise is highly valuable these days.

While ChatGPT can be used, we believe it should mainly be used to create outlines, generate ideas & summarize existing literature on the topic.

Solid Backlinking

Backlinking is incredibly important in order to get high search engine rankings. Having these backlinks exist on other websites are a signal to Google and other search engines about the authority and relevance of your website and how highly your website should rank on their search engines.

Finding High Authority Websites for Backlinking:

Finding high authority websites to put in backlinks can be of great help to a website. Tools such as SEMrush help in this endeavor. SEMrush has a backlink audit tool which helps you identify high quality websites. When you identify what websites you want to have backlinks on, there is a wide variety of ways you can have backlinks on the website such as through guest blogs, forum interactions, etc. This strategy is difficult as it involves contacting the owners of the website and requesting to create any content that can have backlinks on them.

This is one of the primary differentiators between a reputable SEO company which spends the time and effort to generate valuable backlinks and backs those backlinks with superior content vs a low-quality SEO company that builds hundreds of backlinks each month but automates the process and relies on creating backlinks from a limited set of domains.

Local Citations:

Finding niche and local directories and posting backlinks on there is an effective strategy for local businesses. Having backlinks on various local and niche directories help improve local SEO. They also help build implicit endorsements if these backlinks are on directories such as Google Business Profile or Bing Places, search engines consider sites like these quite valuable.

If you are looking for a digital marketing company in Naperville that can provide great results for your website, talk to Webtage, a premiere digital marketing agency in Naperville that provides the best SEO service in Naperville for expanding your search visibility.

SEO Agency in Naperville

Generative AI-Led Search in 2024: How Healthcare Organizations Should Refine Their Strategies for Improved Search Visibility

Posted on December 14, 2023 - 10:30 AM by admin

We are a lead generation company with specialized expertise in organic search and paid search for healthcare and B2B verticals.

We are seeing some significant changes in search results, especially for healthcare, led by generative AI, propelling search engines, such as Google & Bing, to improve their search results in order to be more meaningful and personalized for their users.

In this article, we focus on competitive search strategies for healthcare organizations in the age of generative AI.

What are some of these search trends and how will they affect your ability to attract patients?

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) – Google (and Bing) are working to bring generative AI capabilities into their search engines. Generative AI is poised to change the way search engines work and is the biggest search technology breakthrough in 25 years!

Google says: “With new breakthroughs in generative AI, we’re again reimagining what a search engine can do. With this powerful new technology, we can unlock entirely new types of questions you never thought Search could answer, and transform the way information is organized, to help you sort through and make sense of what’s out there.”

Google is not the only search engine experimenting with gen AI in search models. The new Bing, powered by ChatGPT, is already in business.

What does Gen AI-led Search mean for you as a healthcare business?

Earlier, if you typed in ‘how do I find a doctor who truly cares in Santa Clara, CA’ Google would provide you with the ten best sites and would expect you to sift through the websites to find the best doctor for you.

With SGE, Google will save you the trouble of sifting through results. Instead, it will rely on real-time information and Large Language Model-led AI analysis to provide search results so “you’ll be able to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints and insights, and get things done more easily.”

Let’s see what an SGE will produce for the same search: ‘how do I find a doctor who truly cares in Santa Clara, CA.’

As you can see, Google’s SGE has done an analysis of content and produced a compilation of results to provide you with guidance on:

Ways to find a doctor who truly cares in your location. There are websites that Google considers important and lists them. You want to appear here!
A carousel of the top 3 websites that provide specific guidance on this topic, with the ability to click right on the carousel to see more websites. Another real estate on SGE that you would want to target.
Google SGE also offers ‘Perspectives’ which allows user-generated content (UGC) from forums and discussions, including social media, to appear on SGE results. This, interestingly, is also a growing feature Google search currently. We expect perspectives to gain more importance in the coming months.
Finally, with SGE, you can have a follow-up conversation with generative AI by typing in a follow-up question.

How do you go about appearing in Google’s SGE?

If you truly consider the impact of Google’s SGE, it is a paradigm shift in search. With generative AI capabilities, powered by Med-Palm 2, Google’s large language model trained to provide high-quality answers to medical questions, Google search for healthcare will be positioned to provide many healthcare-related informational questions on Google search itself, without the need to directly visit your website.

However, this does not mean that you cannot attract high-quality transactional search-led traffic to your website. Here are steps you can take to position your website high on generative AI-led search engines in the near future:

A good foundational SEO strategy – First of all, you need to ensure that you appear high on organic search results currently. In that sense, a good current SEO base is your defensive strategy. This means authoritative content and the E.A.T. strategy should still be your foundational strategy!

Let’s talk about your offensive strategy next.

2. Clear content that is easy to read – SGE favors readability. Look at your readability score and summarize your page info into simple sentence structures followed by a clear call to action. This means presenting your information in a clear and easy-to-understand language.

3. Well-researched, current, and well-sourced content – Additionally, since healthcare websites fall in the ‘ Your Life, Your Money’ (YLYM) category, it becomes acutely important to put forward well-researched and well-sourced content on your website. This is because search engines are particularly demanding of the trustworthiness of your content if you provide advice regarding money or health. The more current, well-sourced, and trustworthy the content (as in quoted by a reliable healthcare site), the more likely it is to appear on SGE results.

4. Featured Snippets – A related offensive strategy, that is relevant not only for SGE but also current organic search results, is the creation of deep content and developing high authority backlinks to appear as a featured snippet on search.

This begs the question – What are featured snippets?

Featured snippets are valuable answers to search queries that are displayed at the top of search results. Featured snippets aim to provide quick and direct answers to questions being asked. SGE, in that sense, is an extended featured snippet with a summary of the most important information taken from a variety of sources, as opposed to a single source, as in the current featured snippet.

So, how do you go about being featured in the current Featured Snippet or the extended SGE of tomorrow?

First of all, according to Google, it will source featured snippets only from authoritative sites, like government & healthcare sites. So that’s good news for healthcare businesses

Create deep content. What do I mean by deep content? In short, I mean content that meets professional compliance requirements and is medically vetted, so readers get valuable, up-to-date, and factually correct information. It also means creating dynamic and real-time content as far as possible. This is because Google favors “fresh and recent information sources.”

Further steps include getting valuable links from reliable sources in the healthcare industry. To this end, a few things we do for our clients is to have a digital PR strategy for them by getting their content published in high authority industry sites, joining sites like HARO and Qwoted to get them published in reputed journalistic pieces, and building backlinks from local organizations, such as the Chambers of Commerce, professional associations, and local media.

Focus on adding structured data that enables Google to easily parse markup data on your site & brand authority. For healthcare sites, make sure you include frequently asked questions (FAQs) related to healthcare services, article bylines & author schema markups.

5. Digital Reputation – As early versions of SGE become available for personal use, our experience shows that your digital reputation will be paramount in getting links within SGE.

While most healthcare practices think this means getting high ratings and laudatory reviews on Google Business Profile, Healthgrades, Yelp etc. digital reputation is a bigger goal than just getting good reviews.

Digital reputation can be built by combining good reviews with authorship. Ensure your practitioners are authoring articles, appearing on podcasts, and being quoted by reputable local and industry sites.

What Hasn’t Changed

As generative AI-led search becomes prevalent, foundational search strategies remain the same.

E.A.T. Still reigns Supreme – Use content to build brand authority and authorship. Gen AI is even more likely to look at expertise, authority, and trustworthiness to decide which content links to include in its SGE search results.

Local SEO Remains Important – Most healthcare organizations have a local focus. They tend to serve individuals in a certain locality. Building a strong local SEO strategy that includes building high authority local citations, will continue to be important for your business.

Good technical SEO Still Matters – Using a crisp site structure that follows a clean and intuitive navigation structure. Use structured data to mark up the content of your website. For healthcare organizations, we strongly recommend healthcare service FAQs, medical organizations, and authorship markups. Maintain easy readability scores and summarize the information on your pages at the top in clear and concise language, followed by a call to action.

In conclusion, make sure you work with a forward-thinking marketing team that stays ahead of their domain curve, so you don’t have to.

Here are two examples of strong digital reputation management for our clients that have led them to appear prominently in Google’s SGE:

In that sense, some things never change. Search engine optimization (SEO) has never been about tricking Google through paid links or keeping up with algorithm changes. It is about improving user experience (UX) and providing value to your users – if users and influencers find your website relevant and useful they will keep coming back and Google will notice! And that’s the reason we don’t lose page rankings to algorithm changes.

Learn more about our healthcare patient generation services and our other digital solutions for healthcare organizations.

Healthcare Digital Agency

Local SEO Vs National SEO

Posted on May 16, 2023 - 7:55 AM by admin

In a competitive digital world, businesses now need to focus on their online presence more than ever before. A digital presence builds trust and relationships with your customers and allows you to be found easily online.

There are many strategies and tactics that you need to consider when building and promoting your business online.

To reach more people online, the Search Engine Optimization process plays a major role. SEO boosts your content online, making your website rank higher in search engines, and increasing qualified traffic to the website. Within SEO, there are two categories: National SEO and Local SEO. The two seem similar, there are different reasons for undertaking them and different strategies to help promote your organization on search engines.

Local SEO Vs National SEO

When it comes to marketing a business online, several different strategies and tactics can be used. However, one of the most important is search engine optimization (SEO)—and, within that, national SEO and local SEO. Local SEO is a strategy that helps to get more visibility for local search-specific keywords. National SEO is aimed at companies with a nationwide reach. It’s the strategy that focuses on promoting your business to rank for broad, highly searched keywords.

What is the Difference Between Local SEO and National SEO?

There are some distinct differences between the Loacl SEO and Nationa SEO strategies.

Key Differentiation 1: Target Audience

Businesses that engage in National SEO generally target a broader audience. National SEO is best suited for businesses with a national or global target audience. If your target audience is national or international, then ensure that you optimize all the pages on your site with the right titles, meta descriptions, headings, and content that’s suited to the needs of your audience.

Local SEO businesses’ websites are designed to attract customers in a specific area. Optimizing your website for local searches is an important step to increasing location. Make sure that all your locations are listed correctly on your website so that customers can find your business easily.

Key Differentiation 2: Keywords & Targeted Search Real Estate

National SEO campaigns target various keywords and phrases that relate to the product and services without any geography. Important Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP) features include organic listings, People Also Ask (PAA) boxes, and featured snippets.

In order to get featured on search engines, optimize the website content with broad keywords and long tail keywords. If ‘running tights’ is a broad keyword, ‘best breathable running tights’ would be a long-tail keyword.

Broad keywords are highly competitive and may be harder to gain visibility for. Try to target long-tail keywords that use a different strategy. These phrases are longer and more specific than broad keywords and therefore may allow you to gain visibility for highly relevant keywords faster.

Second, use semantic keywords (words or phrases that are related to each other conceptually) properly to get visibility for organic listings, PAA boxes, and featured snippets. For example, if we were to speak about “digital marketing,” a semantically related keyword might be “SERP” or “SEO.”

A PAA box includes similar questions that people have asked on the topic that the user is seeking more information on and appears like this on search engines:

You might find more PAA questions about your brand or related to your industry. Make sure to answer all of those questions on your FAQs page on your website. In order to rank in a PAA box, your content must include the most relevant answer for your target query.

A featured snippet, on the other hand, is a reversal of typical search results where the descriptive snippet appears first, followed by the website link:

The content that appears inside of a Featured Snippet is automatically pulled from web pages in Google’s index. Optimize the content on your webpage so Google chooses to use your content in the Featured Snippet. The key to scaling this up is to add lots of definitions, ordered lists, tables, and other formats that Google loves to put into Featured Snippets on your page.

Local SEO Campaigns, on the other hand, are best suited to target location-specific similar keywords and terms that individuals are likely to be searching in their local areas.

Important SERP features that businesses can get visibility on include the local map pack, Google My Business cards (that show photos and other information about your business), and organic listings. To start, you need to conduct some research on local search engines and understand what types of queries people are using in your geographic area. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs Keywords Explorer to get an idea of what keywords people are searching for in your area. Once you have a list of all relevant target keywords, you can start optimizing your website for them.

A local map pack is a great real estate to appear in on search engines for local businesses as that’s what appears right under paid search results.

If you’re looking to appear on positions 1-3 of Local Pack listings, work on optimizing your Google My Business listing as that provides more than 25% of ranking success in Google Local Pack. Pay attention to your Google My Business listing by verifying it first and optimizing it.

Key Differentiation 3: Content

In National SEO, top-of-the-funnel content should be emphasized.

Your content should be of unique and high quality and should be able to solve user problems. For instance, awareness stage keywords, such as ‘WordPress vs Drupal,’ where the user is trying to figure out a problem, is a great keyword strategy to adopt when creating a content strategy for a National SEO.
Consider submitting your content on niche or industry-specific lists for higher quality and relevant links.
National SEO strategies rely mostly on high-quality content creation, including blog posts, white papers, and product, industry, and location pages. An important consideration here is whether to leave your white paper ungated to allow search engines to index the content or gate it for valuable lead information.
Ensure your website has a proper structure so you can easily access your important pages with as few clicks as possible. This allows people to navigate to your page easily and also signals to search engine bots that the page is valuable when it is not deep inside a complex navigational hierarchy.
Remember to create attractive and useful content that can engage maximum users as Google refers to user engagement and signals as determinants of web page relevancy.
The main content marketing goal should be Traffic × Conversions = Sales.

Location-based content is emphasized in Local SEO. You should create content that is targeted toward local customers.

These could be blog posts about events or attractions in the area or reviews of local businesses and services.
Additionally, make sure that all of your content is optimized for local SEO by including location-specific keywords throughout.
Ensure that the Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) usage is consistent across owned, paid, and earned channels. This is referred to as NAP Consistency.
Ensure that you optimize location-specific pages.
Build backlinks from niche or location-specific citations.

In general, you should let content fuel your SEO strategy.

Key Differentiation 4: Backlinks

Both Local and National SEO campaigns can benefit from having effective high-quality backlinks, which could be built using content marketing, niche blog postings, link building, and guest blogging.

While building backlinks for National SEO, invest time in building trustworthy links from genuine websites in your niche. Moz Pro SEO, SEMRush, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, and WordPress CMS are a few important platforms that help in improving National SEO. These platforms help analyze traffic, backlinks analysis, competitor analysis, and visibility of websites in the search results.
An important aspect of local SEO is claiming and managing profiles on directories like Google My Business, Yext, and Yelp. These profiles help customers discover your business online and provide an opportunity for you to manage the information about your business that appears in search results. Make sure all the information listed is accurate and up-to-date, as this will help improve your ranking in search results.

Citations

Creating local citations won’t help national SEO campaigns at all. Instead, focus on creating and optimizing informative and valuable content, which helps in boosting the domain authority of the website.
Maintaining NAP consistency throughout the citations is very important in Local SEO Campaigns. Any inconsistency can lead to dropping the keyword positions in the local search results. Include a map with directions or contact information on each page of your website so potential customers can find their way to your location easily.

Competition

National SEO has a lot of competition, and it is expensive to build top search visibility. If your website has informative and valuable content, it can attract high-quality inbound links that will boost the domain authority of the website and drive search engine ranking positions. To gain traction in search engines create high authority content (focuses on building your brand’s credentials in an industry), ebooks, how-to content (videos, blogs, infographics), and standout opinion pieces(platforms like Medium and Huffington Post have made it easy for thought leaders to share their ideas), original research pieces (whitepapers, case studies, interviews), and more.
Generally speaking, local SEO has less competition compared to businesses looking for national search visibility, but the approach to building local search visibility relies on building local citations, getting content published in local, industry-specific directories, maintaining NAP consistency, and creating content that is useful, relevant, and local. You can improve your website’s visibility and reach new potential customers organically by creating a city-specific landing page, FAQ pages, hosting local events, and more.

Key Differentiation 5: Reasons to Choose National vs Local

Reasons to Choose National SEO

Target Market: National SEO is an excellent technique for enhancing your brand recognition across locations and positioning yourself in the crowded marketplace.
Established Expertise: If you have a national SEO campaign in place, establish your brand expertise by developing thought leadership articles.
National Level Brands: If you have become big enough on a national level, national SEO can help you penetrate even the international market.

Reasons to Choose Local SEO

Local Area Focus: If your company is relatively new in the business and targets local clientele, it’s better to target local customers.
Local Competition: If you are only competing against local businesses that offer the same products and services as you do, then go for local SEO.
Nature of Business: Local SEO can definitely improve your chances of attracting people who might need your business in your area.

Conclusion

Having a solid SEO foundation should be a priority for your business. Every business is unique and requires a unique approach to marketing its campaign online.

The key ranking factors for local SEO are quality local backlinks, google my business optimization with high-quality images, frequency of listings, business updates listings, and review quality and quantity.

While a high-quality result for National SEO primarily depends on the authority, expertise, and reliability of the content.

With the right SEO strategies, you can increase your website’s visibility and rankings, as well as boost your keyword’s searchability and annual revenue. The best SEO company in Chicago can help in developing and implementing SEO campaigns for your business.

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How to Increase Traffic to Your Website in 2023 Using A Results-Driven SEO Strategy

Posted on February 24, 2023 - 10:54 AM by admin

Are you looking for an SEO strategy that will help boost your rankings and visibility in 2023? If so, then this blog post is for you.

SEO is one of the key pillars of all marketing strategies. 2023 brings with it a rapidly evolving SEO landscape. If you want to reach out to potential customers, you must be in sync with users’ search behaviors and continually develop your SEO strategy and efforts.

Here are the biggest 2023 SEO trends that you need to know as it’ll help you change the way you strategize and develop an action plan this year.

Embrace Chaos

Expect lots of chaos and dynamism as SEO undergoes a major overhaul this year. We’ve been seeing traces of this trend last year with Google rolling out even more updates than it ever did.

Google will continue to roll and finish fresh updates as the year progresses. It’s wise to stay on top of these search updates. It might seem chaotic at the outset, but it’s what will precisely bring the much-needed order to the SEO landscape.

At Webtage, we’d like to add the caveat that while it is our job to stay on top of search algorithm updates and Google’s guidance, great SEO is about improving user experience – if users find your website relevant and useful they will keep coming back and Google will notice! And that’s the reason we don’t lose page rankings to algorithm changes.

Get Acquainted With ChatGPT

Talking of Google, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), the new AI-powered chatbot, has revolutionized search engine optimization.

The potential of ChatGPT is huge with its easy, human-like conversational interface with users that answers all their queries. It’s no surprise that Google has recently announced its product Bard to compete with ChatGPT.

If you’re an SEO professional who’s not using ChatGPT, we highly recommend using it for your business’ benefit. From keyword research, writing meta descriptions, and using it as a search assistant, to a generic brainstorming tool.

At Webtage, we use ChatGPT to consolidate research on topics, create meta tags for search engine visibility, and boost our copy creation process for blogs, ads, and the web. However, we strongly advise against using ChatGPT to create content without bringing in your first-hand experience, deep expertise, pointers, evaluation & refinement to make the output useful.

But you can use it to aid you for insights and even outline your content marketing strategy with a bird’s eye view of tactics for content related to your niche. However, if your competition is also using ChatGPT for their content strategy, then they would follow the same thing and create similar content like you.

Google search engine’s stance on AI-generated content continues to evolve with time. Initially, Google was against any kind of AI-generated content. Now Google’s stance has been that it will penalize any “spammy automatically-generated content.”

Curious if the content you generate can trigger a spam (read “fake content”) alert? Check it here: https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/

Create Content For People, Not Robots And Spiders

Google released its first “helpful content update” in 2022, urging marketers to create web content that prioritizes people and offers users with a meaningful experience. Google prefers content created for people by people and it views AI-generated spammy content a violation of the company’s guidelines. It states you can use AI for insights and optimization, not long-form content such as articles.

In 2023, Google is going to favor unique, fresh, relevant, purposeful, and user-centric content. The search engine algorithms are highly sophisticated, quickly spotting content that doesn’t satisfy the readers and has been spun by automated tools. Don’t go that route as there are high chances of getting penalized.

Google also made an addition to its popular EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trust) acronym in December 2022. The updated acronym reads EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust). This makes sense in a digital world where there’s an influx of AI-generated content. Showcasing the experience of the author or creator builds trust and credibility that it’s written by humans for humans. So, create content that projects your expertise in your subject area. Display an author bio with their detailed experience, a separate author page with a list of all their articles or content, and social profiles. But it’s not just the experience of the author or creator that counts, but also topics of their content should be related to their experience.

With Google’s new guidelines showing a clear preference for long-form resourceful content, fix pages and posts with thin content. For example, product pages can have more details such as dropdown menus, FAQs, and testimonials apart from descriptions.

Focus on quality and not quantity with content creation in 2023.

Focus on Technical SEO

In 2023, companies that focus on the improvement of the technical aspects of their websites will grow significantly. Google is incentivizing sites with better user experiences. Better user experience (UX) means higher ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

There are other key SEO metrics that mean more than ranking and that’s organic traffic via Google Analytics and lead conversions (Leads / Revenue). Unless ranking is affecting a company’s bottom line, it’s not the most important SEO metric to report to your clients. So, organic traffic and lead conversions are standard go-to SEO metrics to focus on. Other factors to measure your SEO performance include indexability, search visibility, time spent on the site, and the bounce rate.

However, which SEO metrics to measure depends on your marketing goals. Have a bigger picture when analyzing SEO metrics and track a few related ones only. For example, a long time spent on the site might look impressive at the outset, but if it’s not leading to conversions, you’re probably attracting the wrong audience.

Keep an eye on and stay on top of Google’s Page Experience Update, Core Web Vitals, and Link Best Practices to fix technical SEO issues regularly within a certain time threshold. These include monitoring the page loading speed, browser response time, and content stability during loading for a seamless user experience.

Like content, you’ll see many SEO automation tools and platforms that you can use to perform routine tasks and track technical SEO metrics.

The Rise Of Visual Or Multisearch

With the increased popularity of TikTok and Instagram, people are steering towards visual content.

Multisearch was announced in April 2022 to help people view images and text at the same time when they search for something online. Multisearch, powered by Google Lens, allows people to use their phones to search images and text, and get the most relevant results. We can expect more advancements in Google’s AI development and Multitask Unified Model (MUM), a modern technology for answering complex questions that don’t have direct answers. It will provide users with a rich, interactive, and engaging experience as graphic cards of imagery and auto-complete features are directly tied into every search result.

You’ll need to balance the content, i.e. text with images and videos. Also, focus on the mobile optimization of these visual elements as it will become the norm in 2023.

Shoot More Videos

There’s an increased amount of attention to video results when searching for something online.

2023 will be the year of videos and if you haven’t included it in your SEO strategy, we urge you to do so this year.

The best part is that you don’t need fancy equipment to shoot your videos. Videos taken from your mobile also perform as well as professionally shot videos. The focus is more on the content of the video than the production quality.

Conclusion

We’ve shared our SEO predictions and insights for 2023. To apply this SEO knowledge to yield results, you’ll need a dedicated SEO expert team, either in-house or by hiring an agency.

At Webtage, the best SEO Company in Chicago IL, we excel in delivering one of the most comprehensive, realistic, and proven SEO strategies plans with an excellent and consistent track record of implementing the SEO requirements to help our clients achieve their desired results.

Best SEO Services in Naperville

Are you a Healthcare Provider That’s Offering Telehealth Services? This is What You Need to do Right Now!

Posted on April 14, 2020 - 6:26 PM by admin

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in place orders in many areas of the country, many healthcare providers, including hospitals, doctors, and mental healthcare providers, are now providing virtual care. Google has recently rolled out tow new features in Google Search and Maps to allow users to conveniently find telehealth options, “whether it’s to a doctor’s office down the street, the hospital across town, or a national telehealth platform.” You can also clearly communicate your COVID-19 information with your intended audience.

So how do you, as a provider, access these features? Let’s talk about Google Maps first (if you are not familiar with the significance of Google Maps for your healthcare business or have not claimed your Google My Business listing , learn why it’s critical that you do so now and while you’re at it, also learn foolproof tips on optimizing your GMB listing):

1. - Google My Business now offers URLs dedicated to COVID-19 and telehealth services. Make sure you add the URL links to your Google My Business Page listing. After your edits have been reviewed and approved, it’ll appear in Google Maps listing and your detailed Google Maps listing as well. Here’s how you can add the URLs: Sign in to your GMB listing by visiting business.google.com. Next click on ‘Info’ on the left-hand side panel. If you are a healthcare organization, you will see two additional URL options for COVID-19 info link and virtual care link. Add the links as applicable and click Save.
  - List Telemedicine Services on your Business Profile on Google. Google adds that “you can choose what to offer from suggested types of services. If the type of service isn’t listed, you can add your own custom services, like “telemedicine,” “telehealth,” “video visits,” or “house calls.” Once the services edit has saved, patients will be able to see the services you have listed, including online visits or telemedicine.
2. - Finally, in the Attributes section, add video visits to the offerings, if you do provide video visits. This will also help display your telemedicine option to your patients when they search for your services in Google.

I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention that Google is also helping healthcare providers with technology infrastructure and support via “HIPAA-compliant G Suite products (including using Google Meet for telehealth or virtual visits), deploying virtual agents to field questions related to COVID-19, and helping with capacity-planning and demand forecasting of key medical supplies to better manage their supply chains.”

If you need help planning your transition to virtual care, contact us at Webtage where we have facilitated the transition to online visits for healthcare providers, developed the capacity to communicate high quality and credible information in the midst of the health crisis, and marketed online visits to continue solid revenue generation for our client.

[mk_page_title_box page_title=”Healthcare Digital Marketing Done Right” page_subtitle=”Grow Quickly & Effectively” section_height=”150″ font_size=”24″ title_force_font_size=”true” sub_font_size=”16″ subtitle_force_font_size=”true”]

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Why Google My Business Optimization Should Be #1 on Your Local Marketing Agenda AND Foolproof Optimization Tips

Posted on April 14, 2020 - 1:59 PM by admin

Why is local marketing big business? According to Moz, there are “approximately seven billion unique local searches per month on Google in the United States.” More than 50% of mobile searches have a local intent. If you are a local business and haven’t invested in local digital marketing, you should be thinking about it now.

So how do you market your business for local visibility? In this article, we will focus on strategies to optimize your Google Business Listing to increase your chance of appearing on positions 1-3 of local pack listings (also known as Google Map listings) . These listings appear below paid Ads, but above organic listings. As an example, we searched for “digital marketing near me” on Google and as you can see, at the top of the page are the paid ad listings, followed by Google Map listings. Organic listings appear even further below. So unless you’re running a paid ad campaign, local pack listings are your best bet for Google page 1 visibility.

Main Idea: If you’re looking to appear on positions 1-3 of Local Pack listings, work on optimizing your Google My Business listing as that provides more than 25% of ranking success in Google Local Pack!

So how do you go about optimizing your Google My Business Listing?

Claim Your Listing and Get it Verified – While you can still post content on your GMB listing even if you’ve haven’t claimed it, claiming your listing will provide you with a lot more control, including responding to client reviews, create posts, or reach out to GMB customer service to resolve issues. So make sure you’ve claimed your listing. If you listing does not exist, create one at by going to google.com/business and select “Start now” in the top right-hand corner. Once you’ve claimed your listing, make sure you verify it by clicking on the “Verify” tab in your GMB dashboard. next, you will be asked to verify your mailing address. An postcard will then be sent to the mailing address you entered. Follow the steps on the postcard to get your listing verified.
Craft the Business Title Well – Add Business Name. Remember that by adding your product or service keyword improves your chances of ranking for those keywords. Notice that all three local pack listings for “digital marketing near me” (and that includes Webtage as well!) include “digital marketing” in their business name. While this is not a guarantee for a top position, it is certainly a big plus.
Make sure your profile is as close to 100% set up as possible – This includes vital information such as hours, website URLs, services or products, highlights where you can add sttributes such as, “veteran-led” or “women-led,” descriptions, photos and phone numbers.
Choose Your Category Well – Do not dilute the impact by choosing too many categories. Try to limit to 1-3 categories.
Gather Testimonials from Your Customers – GMB makes it very easy to collect reviews if you don’t have enough reviews. Simply share the ‘Review Form’ link from your GMB dashboard with your clients. Also, ensure you respond to reviews posted to your GMB listing. Do not ignore negative reviews. Best ways to respond to a negative review is to acknowledge the negative sentiment and provide solutions to your customer.
Post often – GMB Posts show up in search results in the Knowledge Panel and Google Map search results. You can post about events to promote events at your location. You may also post promotional offers, highlight products, or post announcements.
Communicate With Your Audience – Answer any questions posed by the general audience. To answer a question posed, navigate to your listing via Google Search and see all questions listed under Q&A section. Navigate to the question you want to answer and hit “answer.” Once you’re done, click “post.” Answering questions posed will help you build customer’s trust and improve search visibility.

Here’s a simple to use infographic on ways to optimize your Google My Listing:

Digital Marketing Agency in Naperville

Healthcare Digital Marketing: What E.A.T. Means for Your Search Visibility and Why Good Content is Your Best Friend!

Posted on March 1, 2020 - 9:01 PM by admin

In 2018 Google unveiled its “medic update” which had strong implications for businesses in the YMYL (short for ‘Your Money or Your Life’ or in other words websites that provide any information that affects people’s health, wellness, or money). Since more than 40% of websites affected due to this update were health related sites, this came to be known as the “medic update.” There have been further Core Quality Updates in 2019 that continue to have deep implications for search visibility of healthcare organizations.

So what do these updates mean if you are a healthcare provider? Put simply, it means that Google does not want to recommend “uneducated advice, opinions, or potentially fraudulent websites.” Google wants to be certain that the sites that they recommend display a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

So how do you signal your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness to Google?

Expertise

Build expertise by creating frequent content that is informative, useful and engaging for your audience.
Remove poor quality, dated content from your website that would signal half-baked, incorrect, or worse, harmful information to your audience.
Keep in mind that it is not only important to build E.A.T. for your website, but also work on building E.A.T. for your content creators. How?

Ensure your content creators are experts in healthcare. Google has indicated that “medical advice needs to be written by people with high medical E-A-T to be considered high quality.”
You may be a wonderful and experienced doctor, but if you haven’t built your online profile then there is nothing in the digital world to back up your expertise. So strengthen your online expertise by writing guest articles for niche publications in your field and contribute to industry publications and forums.
Add by-lines expert to website content. This will signal that the author is an expert in the profession or niche and the information provided in that blog is trustworthy.
Link content creator’s profile to other online profiles, especially on authority sites.
Use structured data to markup the author’s profile that will allow for a connection to be made with other online profiles for the author.

Cite credible research, statistics, and data in the content that you create.

Authority

Build authority by developing valuable backlinks from relevant & authoritative sites.
Gain backlinks from high authoritative sites naturally by guest blogging for niche high DA (domain authority) sites. Most health-related guest blogging sites have clear guidelines on the types of content they will consider for publication. Identify sites that are the best fit for your specialty.
Create outbound links to high quality health sites & industry publications. Try to include links to research studies or academic journal. Outbound links to .edu or .gov or .org sites are especially useful.
Quality over quantity! Take your time to build good quality links. Building links through automated citation submissions may not be enough anymore.
A good social media strategy will help you market your content and get your content shared – another great way to build authority.

Trustworthiness

Build trustworthiness by building positive reviews. Positive client reviews help in increasing the E.A.T. score, so encourage all the satisfied patients to write testimonials on Google My Business, social media, and review sites.
Many healthcare provider websites allow for email subscriptions, online appointment scheduling, online portal sign-ins etc – all considered to be Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPPA. This patient data is vulnerable to being stolen unless your site is secured with an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate is not only necessary for you to be HIPPA compliant, it also signals trustworthiness of your website. Google takes privacy of user data very seriously and provides a boost to those websites that signal their intent to protect their user’s information. So make sure your website is secure with an SSL certificate!
Have a clear way for your visitors to contact you with a clearly accessible Contact page.
Include a Privacy Page to let your patients know how you gather, use, disclose, and manage their data.
If you allow for online transactions through your website, ensure that clearly outline your refunds & returns policy.

E.A.T. is not the only update that has had an impact on Google search rankings of healthcare businesses. The 2019 B.E.R.T. is another update that has hit some healthcare sites hard and is about incorporating Natural Language Processing (NLP) into Google searches. And if pages on your website don’t provide information on topics that users are keying into search bars, then your website is likely to be overlooked.

Note the common theme in all the updates? Create content that is informative, useful, and engaging. Google has been saying this for a very long time. Create great content. That has not changed and will not change. See how we used content creation and a solid digital marketing strategy to help a healthcare practice gain top search visibility, increase online patient lead generation, and grow their long-term patient panel 60%.

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40 Questions to Ask Before You Start Healthcare Digital Marketing

Posted on October 20, 2017 - 2:48 PM by admin

A digital marketing campaign needs a strategic approach and careful planning. Advance preparation can help both clients and vendors develop a common understanding of marketing objectives & constraints.

This questionnaire will help you understand your vision for your organization’s growth goals and plan the overall effort required for a confusion- and conflict-free digital campaign. It will help your vendor understand your constraints and will also lower your risk for running into a time and cost overrun.

So whether you are considering improvements to your existing campaign or an extensive omnichannel marketing launch, use this questionnaire to start your digital strategy on the right footing.

About the Author

A believer in hype-free and performance driven digital strategies, Snigdha’s endeavor is to get your brand established and your business grow. She is passionate about research, design and analytics and works non-stop and meticulously to make sure that your brand stands out from the rest.

Snigdha’s background is in research design, industry research, content creation, and qualitative and quantitative research (including web-based and phone survey methods and focus group discussions). She is a highly qualified professional in the areas of digital marketing strategy design, SEO, content creation, and social media marketing. Most recently she has grown a client’s online presence from zero to 25% online leads within 3-6 months; moved client website to the #1 & #2 spots on Google, Bing, and Yahoo for all major keywords; and generated online leads accounting for 25% – 30% of all leads for that client.

Contact her at snigdha@webtage.com

Healthcare Digital Agency in Naperville

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