SEO should be one of the most important marketing strategies for any business no matter how big or small. The reason SEO is so important is because a majority of all search engine traffic ends up clicking on an organic listing on page 1 and organic traffic tends to greatly influence conversions. While paid search generally occupies the first 3-5 results in search engines for short keywords, organic is still king for long-tail search and local search.
So what can good SEO get you?
Understanding the significance of good SEO is important, but having a clear SEO strategy is key for dominating search results pages. On this page, we intend to outline what we consider to be the most important factors for a good SEO strategy. If you would like to learn more about what a good SEO strategy could do for your business, contact us for a free consultation.
Technical SEO focuses on on-page technical elements that impact the overall rank of websites. Each element by itself doesn’t provide a huge impact for SEO, however, all elements combined will enhance or destroy website organic ranks. These elements include:
Meta Titles
These are coded as H1’s, H2’s, and H3’s within your website design. The text within these title codes tells a search engine what your page is about.
Meta Descriptions
These descriptions are another tool used to tell a search engine what your site is about.
Keyword Density
This measurement refers to the volume of targeted keyword within the text on a webpage. A keyword density can be too low and too high, getting the right mix is important.
Schema
This is a set of code that is added to a webpage that gives a search engine categorical information about a page like business type, address, open hours, and even menu items.
Page Speed
Page speed is controlled by a variety of factors but has a major impact on how well your website ranks on a search page. Search engines (especially Google) prioritize websites that load quicker, especially on mobile.
Image Alt Tags
These tags are little bits of text that are tied to an image within the website coding. Using these alt tag areas, we can insert keyword-focused phrases and improve SEO.
Backlink Health
Backlinks are links on other websites that link to your website. Healthy links can improve your rankings and unhealthy links can hurt them. Maintaining a list of “healthy” links and eliminating “unhealthy” links is an essential practice for higher positioning on the 1st page.
SEO Audit
This is a 5-10 page document with accompanying developer instructions that contain a full analysis of all your website’s technical SEO elements along with specific instructions on how to improve them. Our SEO audits are much different than any other audit you can find on the internet because we include the precise fixes to problems (e.g. giving you the most optimal and exact text to place in an H2 tag). We also include detailed instructions that are designed to be handed to your website designer so that they can perform the more technical updates to your website (e.g. speed optimizations and schema).
SEO Audit Implementation
Once the analysis and audit are complete, our team applies the appropriate updates to your website. We’re highly proficient working inside of most website platforms (e.g. WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, etc…). We are also connected to various teams of website developers who can implement the more technical elements of the audit. Our team manages the entire process from start to finish.
Content refers to any text, imagery, and audio on your website. It’s the information that makes up your online presence. Simply having content online doesn’t mean that it’s findable. The key to creating content that is findable is to craft it so that it is relevant to searchers. Relevancy is at the center of everything when it comes to SEO, therefore improving relevancy is at the center of any SEO content strategy.
Part of improving relevancy has to do with technical SEO framework, like outlined above. However, even with all the appropriate SEO elements in place, your content still might not rank. Not only does the framework need to be in place, the content actually has to be useful for searchers. Search engines like Google have become really good at determining relevancy and usefulness. They use thousands of data points and machine learning to determine if a piece of content is relevant. So it’s important to draft content that actually is useful in the first place. Another part of the relevancy equation has to do with where your content exists on the web and what websites are linking to it - hence the need for content distribution.
Content Creation
Our team will revise existing content and draft new content using the latest industry trends for improved relevancy and user experience.
Content Distribution
We will distribute the content to high-value websites and point traffic back toward your site. These websites include social media pages, Google My Business, blogs, business listings, and other relevant publications.
One of the most important factors for someone making a decision about buying a product/service is what others are saying about it. In other words, the reputation of your business is key. Online, your reputation is most clearly displayed in the form of reviews and business listings. A higher number of good reviews improves your likelihood of convincing someone to purchase or fill out a form to learn more about your service. A complete and accurate business listing gives the impression that your company pays attention to details. An online reputation is important to customer decisions and that’s why they are important to SEO.
Reputation Management Services
Part of our SEO audit will include a review of your online reputation. We’ll analyze your Google My Business and other review websites and provide suggestions on where to improve. There are also many different online softwares available to help your team solicit and manage reviews more easily. Our team will put a plan in place to help you improve and maintain a stellar reputation online by consulting on best practices and connecting you to the best support software available.
Citation Management Services
Our SEO audit will include an analysis of your current citation list and the accuracy of those citations. There are over 100 different business listings out there and most of them are free to list your company. These listings also contain important information about your business like address, hours, and website (among other things). Similar to reputation management, there are several great software services out there to help create and manage your business listings. Our team will help you get connected the the right software for your needs and budget.
Ultimately, search engine optimization is a never-ending task. There is always room to improve and constant updates from search engine algorithms. It’s important to continue to focus on SEO as an organization and stay in the loop with the latest industry trends.
Our team will perform regular check-ups on your website and online reputation. We’ll provide regular reports in order to keep you informed on SEO performance.
