NEW SEO Process & KB

Welcome to TaxProMarketer's SEO Process Overview!

The purpose of this is to give you a picture of how we do SEO setups for our clients. 

This is most easily understood in a two part process, on site SEO setup and local listing building. 

Our On-site SEO process involves being on the physical website of the client and updating information, plug-ins, etc.

The Local Listing Building portion of the SEO setup involves utilizing Bright Local and cleaning up inaccurate local listing information and running campaigns to create new local listings. 

The first few tasks in this process will define terms to help you understand some of the underlying concepts of SEO, and how to engage with them in relation to what we do at TaxProMarketer

Canonical NAP: The decided upon Business Name, Address and Phone Number for this client's business that will be used consistently across ALL platforms. For example, if a client sends us their marketing profile with this address: 1234 ABC Street, Suite 123, KC, MO 64030, but we find through research of their local listings that the internet has their address most consistently as 1234 ABC St., Ste 123, Kansas City, MO 64030, then we are going to use that version of their address. 

Another example would be if a client's company is listed as Tax Professional, LLC, but, on the internet, we find that their business is most commonly listed under Tax Professional, then we're going to use that version of their business name. 

This is all very important because if Google, or other search engines, find discrepancies between NAP for businesses' websites, that tends to be an issue that creates a glass ceiling for a websites ability to get to the top of Google's Snack Pack, which is our goal. 

Our Canonical NAP is stored here: http://bit.ly/2dNlFZK

Local Listings

Local Listings are places around the internet where a companies information is listed. Places like Yelp, Google Listings, Bing Local, AngiesList, etc. These are important because the Search Engines like Google & Bing will audit these local listings with their search bot to see if a company has information on these local listings, and if so, if that information is canonical (consistent universally). 

Google Snack Pack

Google's snack pack is below. When you search for a company that Google decides is "local" as in, the end search user is looking for a local business to help them, then Google presents the searcher with the snack pack, to reflect their top three recommendations to the searcher. Below is an image of one of our clients, Jay Walia's site, worcestertaxreturn.com

This part of the process involves being logged into the clients Word Press Administrator account, which we save in Last Pass.

You can access the back end of the website two ways, by typing in /wp-admin to the end of a clients website, i.e. http://worcestertaxreturn.com/wp-admin

Or, by using Manage Word Press (MWP) and selecting the WordPress Admin tab at the top of the page 

Next, we'll move on to the sequential steps for the On-Site SEO portion of our two step process

Yoast SEO is one of a few plug-ins we use to optimize our clients website's presence on the internet. It serves a few different purposes, as a plug-in, which we'll explain as we go step by step through the process. 

Step 1 with Yoast SEO is fairly simple. Here's how you get into the plug-in.

Next, we're going to select the "Titles & Metas" link on the plugin's side bar

Then, select Post Types

• For Posts and Pages title:
  %%title%% %%sep%% %%sitedesc%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
• For Posts and Pages meta description:
  For now, use %%excerpt%% only.

Click, save, and we're on to step 2!

There are two things we do in this step, first we setup the SEO title, meta description and focus keyword for the homepage. This helps Google understand what the homepage for this website is about, and will rank their homepage. We could, in theory, do the SEO title, meta description and focus keyword for all of the pages on the website, but that would be impractical and unnecessary in many ways. We can do it for the contact or about page, but in general, we only do the homepage. 

The second part is to add authoritative outbound links. There are two ways we add authoritative outbound links to the website: 1) on the homepage and 2) within the blog posts. We add these outbound links to signal to Google that our sites are a reliable source of authoritative information, as well as actually providing site visitors with helpful info.

Here's where you access the homepage of the site through Yoast

Select "Visual" on the right hand side of the screen

To being step 1, scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see the Yoast SEO area

Click the link with the header and a few fields will pop up

As you can see, I've already updated the SEO Title, Meta and Focus KW. But here is how you do it. 

SEO Title

• Template for SEO Title: The Most Trusted [ ] in [Market Area] | Company Name
• Often you have to get creative shortening the tagline because the client's company name is too long. 
  • E.g., Instead of "The Most Trusted CPA in Kansas City" you may need to use, "Kansas City's Most Trusted CPA". This frees up a few character. It's crucial to not exceed the 156 char. limit or else it will get cutoff in a Google search preview.
• Do not abbreviate company name. Make sure it reflects exactly what is in the SEO Spreadsheet. That is where we keep the Canonical NAP

Below is a video explaining the process in more depth. 

Click save, and we're moving on!

As described in the previous step, we add the authoritative outbound links in the same place as the SEO title, on the home page through the Yoast Plug In. 

Use the visual text tab again and scroll to the first paragraph. 

If you notice above, there are three links on the page. One is internal, with Brandt's name connecting to his "About" page. 

The other two are external. CPA and IRS. We link CPA to a description of what a CPA is from the official certification organization. The IRS is linked to the IRS homepage. 

Most of the links we add to the homepage are actually added automatically via the site templates. The main ones that you'll need to configure are the link on our client's initial accreditation statement ("I am [client name], I’m a [accreditation] and I realize that you may not be used to seeing a tax professional talk like this."), and the state tax office link ("Here’s a certain truth: the State and Federal Government would love to have more..."), since both of these change from client to client.

Accreditation

There are typically only three options, and here are the links we use for them:

• EA: http://www.naea.org/taxpayers/what-enrolled-agent
• CPA: http://www.aicpa.org/BECOMEACPA/GETTINGSTARTED/FREQUENTLYASKEDQUESTIONS/Pages/default.aspx#What_is_a_CPA
• Tax Professional/Preparer/RTRP: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Tips-for-Choosing-a-Tax-Return-Preparer
• CTRS (Certified Tax Resolution Specialist): http://www.astps.org/certification-program/
• CPP (Certified Payroll Professional):
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Payroll_Professional
  • http://www.americanpayroll.org/certification/certification-cppinfo/
• Certified Tax Coach: http://www.certifiedtaxcoach.org/about/faq/
• Certified Financial Planner (CFP): http://www.cfp.net/about-cfp-board/why-cfp-certification-matters

Local Tax Office

Do a search for "[Market Area] tax office". Tips for choosing the best link:

• It should be a .gov website
• It should be local enough to be relevant to the readers, and not so local that it becomes irrelevant to some (i.e. usually state tax info instead of county or city, depending on the size of the market area)
• The site should have an area with information about filing your state return, and possibly a place to pay local taxes

To add a link, select / highlight the text you want and hit the link button (below) and paste in the link you want to link out to, and you're done. 

Yoast SEO - Social

• When configuring the Yoast SEO plugin, click Yoast SEO > Social:
  • Fill in links for Facebook and Twitter.
  • If/once the client has a Google+ and or LinkedIn page for their business, add links the these as well.
• if these aren't yet populated in the Master Spreadsheet then look in SME spreadsheet or just simply copy the links from their homepage header
• Other steps:
  • Check Add Open Graph meta data for Facebook
  • Check Add Twitter card meta data
  • Check Add Google+ specific post meta data

Click save and you're moving on!

Above is a video walking you through how to get accurate information for this section, and below is an example of how to fill out the fields. 

Each site must have a favicon. Typically, we try to make these custom to fit the user's logo, but in the case that our client doesn't have a logo we can use for this, we will use a default (found in Google Drive > TPM Cloud > SEO).

1. Create Favicon

You must use a square, transparent (if possible) image file. There are many favicon generators out there, but I like this one: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ because it seems to maintain the integrity of the image best. Simply upload the image you want to be the favicon  to this site and click "Create Icon".

2. Set Favicon on Site

Currently we use Easy Icon to set the favicon. 

• Navigate on the Admin Dashboard to Appearance > Easy Icon.
• Upload the image you created or the stock image at the bottom of the page.
• Once you upload it, it will the automatically selected, so simply click "Use this as my icon".

Please note: Kim will often set the favicon herself, in which case you merely need to check off the task in Basecamp. Easy Icon has a lot of bugs, so if you want Kim to use another plugin, feel free to ask her to. 

3. Set Favicon on 'Renew' Site

The first video is the general Search Console Setup process

*THE NEXT VIDEO IS AN EDIT TO THE SITEMAP UPDATE PROCESS*

The next video is on how to clean up 404 (broken) pages using google search console

The Big 4

1. Google My Business
2. Yelp
3. Bing Places
4. Apple Ma

These four local listing profiles are the main ones we need to get access to, and each requires a different process. I will break down that process for you on each of the profiles.

Tax Preparation

Tax Preparation Service

Accountant

Accounting Firm

Certified Public Accountant

Bookkeeping Service

Tax Consultant

Payroll Services

Bing Places is similar to Google My Business (GMB)

We will establish the clients profile on Bing Places (BP) for them. The verification process is similar to GMB with a postcard. 

As you can see from the Bing rep above, they are careful to review the listings that we verify, ensuring that no duplicates are created in the process. 

Use the GMB Logo and GMB Cover images that are stored in client folders on the TPM Cloud when setting up BP profiles 

If none are present, please create in Canva.com using the TPM GMB Cover and GMB Logo templates

The above is from Moz Local, another SEO third party service that we like. They're detailing in this image what the MOST important local listings are for different business categories, like Accounting & Tax Preparation. 

Local Listings are the life blood to the bone structure of our onsite optimization. 

While the On-Site work we do does a attract the attention / traffic on the internet, building a strong Local Listing network for our clients is a big part of the juice that drives the organic traffic to them, and moves them up to the Google Snack Pack. 

In the past, we used a company called Synup, on a free account, to push out local listings to websites like Yelp, SuperPages, YellowPages, Manta, etc... Time's have changed. 

For example, a company called Yext wants to charge us $23,000 / year to manage 100 websites local listings. That's a recurring fee, which is crazy, because basically all we're asking them to do is update our client's information on those websites and make sure it's correct and then publish it. This is a ONE TIME process, that companies like Yext want to charge an arm and a leg for to "manage". 

In steps, BrightLocal. 

BrightLocal is a similar 3rd party platform designed to manage local listings for websites. They have a one time fee of $2 per listing, and a $65 / month SEO Pro package, which we're utilizing. 

The idea on BrightLocal is to create a client account, and then unique locations for that client, ensure sure the information is correct from our end and then pick and choose the local listings we want BrightLocal to create utilizing their Citation Campaign tool. 

BrightLocal guarantees that 70% of the local listings we ask them to make will be made. Which seems silly that we're paying for a service, but only getting a 70% production rate, but many of the local listings are making it more difficult to access with verification methods & security measures that make it tough to manage if you're not the direct business owner. 

We'll talk about GoogleMyBusiness / Google Local in a second, but in general we have a preference on which local listings we want to create with BrightLocal, and which ones we don't care as much about. We'll discuss that next...