Understanding the basics of SEO and how it affects your business is important. Knowing your opportunities in every niche of the marketing industry can help you build a high-valued and profitable business. Let's begin by some understanding some of the basics: Market Opportunity:
Buy-in from your business:
Goals and Expectations:
In-House vs Outsourced SEO:
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The future. Some of us are scared by it. Some of us are excited about it. Some of us are indifferent about it. Regardless of how you feel about the future, time pushes on, things change, and the world evolves to change with it. As we come to learn through the study of this book is that SEO is about leverage your business in today's savage market. When utilized correctly, SEO can be vital to the future of your business. Being discovered and successfully utilized is the true power of a growing business. The role of SEO will no doubt morph over time. Since this book was written, it has already impacted the mobile and voice recognition industry in a considerable way. Its presence has grown in the social media world as well as the indexation of web multimedia content. As more of the market has a presence on the web, SEOs will certainly increase their tactics to complete their mission which is to provide quality SERPs for its consumer base. I can only imagine where its reach will go next. I will end with a quote from Steve Jobs. To me he was one of the most influential people when it came to revolutionizing technology and how the consumer utilized it. "Let's go invent tomorrow, instead of worrying about happened yesterday." - Steve Jobs Web content is constantly evolving and shifting. There may come a time when your business needs to restructure your website or move some things around for better efficiency. With this comes some challenges that we will address in this blog. Occasionally you might have the need to upgrade server capacities or purchase a new domain name. If you outsource to a third party for server services this could change your URL. Whether you are moving to a new domain or just rearranging content, be sure to include a 301 redirect every time to ensure that your traffic will be passed on to the new location. Just like a wedding reception, there are likely that you will lose customers from the transition of one place to another. Be sure to inform you customer base of the upcoming changes to ensure that they continue to follow the trail. It will take some time for the search engines to recrawl through the new changes for indexing. The quantity of content and the amount of pages/blogs/videos that are moved will determine how long it will take you to recover in regards to your search rankings. The slightest change could potentially have the same effect as a massive one on the web crawler. Be sure to update your sitemap and continue to monitor ratings and traffic data to ensure that progress is being restored. It is vital to take the same steps as when you initially set up your domain in the first place. (See previous blog posts regarding that information.) As I've mentioned before, quality is always the best policy. Revisit and revamp your business needs as necessary to retain high quality content and customer service. Just be careful not to lose all your hard earned customers along the way! The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other. H. G. Wells So what action can we take to make things happen rather than wonder what might have been? The first task is to create a tangible measure of success. We can't rely on how we "feel" things are going. No, the only accurate way to measure growth is to create tangible benchmarks, revisit at specific intervals, and compare data. I would suggest using a logfile tracking software in addition to the previously mentioned Google analytics tools. There are several out there, both paid and free. Here is a link of some of the top ones for this year. In case you are wondering what are some tangible items I can measure...here are a few:
By identifying what is performing poorly, you can prioritize what actions are needed most urgently. Once you identify and prioritize, use these steps to fine-tune what is needed.
“I am still learning.”— Michelangelo at the age of 87 In case you didn't already know, technology has the shelf life of a banana. It's new and then it's outdated and expired. The only way to stay relevant in the technology world is to continue to be invested in keeping yourself educated. With that comes research. I know, I know. You just THOUGHT you were done with researching after you said goodbye to your last high school or college class. Education is a lifelong skill! Follow people and content that are high quality and well respected in your industry. Really take the time to consume their content and understand their viewpoint. Don't be afraid to question and test it to your prior knowledge and others' proven data research. Here are a couple of some that have been helpful to me:
Experiment with your own theories of what might work and see what happens. I mean, that's how most discoveries are made! Begin with small changes to keep troubleshooting simplified and testing efficient. Keep a journal of your experiments and take notes as to what was successful and what was a flop!
Mobile: If you want your site to mobile friendly, and I can't imagine why you wouldn't, this is the necessary checklist:
Local: Being able to be locally located by your user is critical for a variety of business endeavors. So how do you allow users to find something close to them at the moment? How do you make yourself known in the vast ocean of other businesses on the web? Simple answer: provide as much relevant data to the search engines as possible!
Vertical: Shopping and blogging
Handling any type of loss can be difficult. When it hits your business, it can be monumental. What happens now? Is it enough of a loss to slow manufacturing, do we begin to layoff employees, how do we cut costs? First things first. Let's make sure that our traffic loss data is being interpreted correctly before we make any big decisions.
Step 1: Identify the cause of the traffic loss. Is it isolated to one search engine? If so, check to see if they have reached out to you. Perhaps they've had to temporarily suspend your site due to a policy violation. Step 2: If there is no outreach from a search engine, additional research may be needed. Identify the exact date on which your traffic dropped. Were there any outside factors that would have contributed to this? Step 3: Perhaps there was an algorithmic update that caused traffic to decline that day. Panda and Penguin are two major Google algorithms that have a major impact on the internet. Let's identify the difference between the two according this Main Street post (https://www.mainstreethost.com/blog/panda-penguin-guide-google-algorithm/)
Use tools such as Panguin Tool to see if any algorithm updates were released that day. If your site was affected by a Panda algorithm update, you will need to reexamine your website and significantly revamp it. Look closely at the "me too" content. The best way to rebuild your customer base is to ensure high quality content that will get users to interact and engage. Because Google will have to "crawl" back through your redesigned content, it may take awhile before you return to pre-release traffic numbers. Panda updates are frequent so make it your mission to closely monitor what is published on your site. If traffic continues to take a hit due to algorithm updates, more than likely you haven't done enough to satisfy Panda's requirements. Keep revising. Stay away from misleading links, overuse of widgets, posts that don't relate to your content, and advertorials. Click here to learn more about what specific items Panda and Penguin algorithms are looking for. "Remember that people are on social media, at least in part, to be affirmed---to feel that they matter to others. For that reason, you should dedicate some time each day to engaging with the posts of others. Offer constructive, helpful comments and replies." (pg 531)
Although it is unclear just how far search engines utilize social media platforms to determine result ranking, indirect influences of social media marketing can be beneficial to your brand when it comes to ranking higher on search engines.
Once you make your presence known on social media, how do you know if it's working? Here are some tracking tips:
Hootsuite is one I've used in the past and has proven to be overall pretty good. Here's a link to one of their blogs that has some good insight on this topic.
What is content marketing? According to Dictionary.com it is a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
I found a short video that does a really good job at showing us what that looks like. Take a look... As you begin to create your content marketing campaign, here are some concepts to think about:*
Now that we've researched and made a plan on the best course of action to attract the SEO's attention, now we need to create a website that is worthy is repeat visits. Step 1: Make sure that the world can find your website
Step 2: Information architecture (IA) needs to be well thought out
The book had a great visual analogy of this... Another example of well structured site architecture... Step 3: Incorporate Flat Architecture
Step 4: Search-Friendly Site Navigation
Step 5: Choose the correct TLD (top-level domain).
Step 6: Optimize your domain name
Step 7: Keep it Mobile Friendly
Step 8: Theme
Step 9: Multicultural
Step 10: Citing Sources
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AuthorHello! My name is Becky Gage and I'm starting a new blog called Becky's Bytes. The goal is of this blog is to take you along the process of what I'm learning about in the book "The Art of SEO, Mastering Search Engine Optimization" by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, and Jessie C. Sricchiola. Archives
November 2022
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