Proper search engine optimization campaign does not just happen overnight. It is actually a carefully planned strategy that takes, at a minimum, months to plan, conceptualize, design, implement and monitor. Moreover, true optimization is just that... an ongoing effort to continually improve your SEO campaign for increased effectiveness and ultimately, a bottom line you'll want to brag about.
A good practice to follow is to analyze your site every now and then to make sure you're working off a solid SEO foundation. In fact, this is the official checklist we at SWISSLOGIC use as a starting point to see where a site is pre-optimization:
- First and foremost, please do not assume you will be able to optimize your site entirely by yourself... even if you do have a dedicated specialist on staff. The belief that you can simply hire an SEO company down the road is also a common error in judgment we often run into. This sort of thinking will cost much more in the long run.
It is never too soon to do an analysis of your business and the major keywords your customers, partners and anyone else you want on your website will be using to find you. Honestly gauge whether you'll be able to rank high for competitive keywords while keeping the bulk of your search marketing tasks in-house. Some companies will need the assistance of an outside SEO firm but there still are a few industries out there where you can still rank highly for high-traffic keywords on your own using the tools we offer through our web•pass solution. The decision to outsource everything or keep most of the tasks in-house needs to be made early in the process, not later.
- If you have not begun designing / developing your website... STOP! Consider an SEO plan. In fact, create and develop one. Do a complete keyword analysis (there are many tools available to help with your keyword research) to determine the sort of content you will need to provide both a positive user-experience and top 10 search rankings. Sharing this information with your web designer will help in building high-quality pages naturally optimized for the key terms you're targeting. It also makes for a better match to the overall theme of the content and web design, thus broadening the impact and effectiveness of your new website.
- Learn what a secondary page is and how to utilize yours. When you type your domain name in a browser, you'll usually get a company's home page. Everything else is a secondary page. In many cases, secondary pages rank just as well and sometimes better than your home page. Spend ample time developing these secondary pages and optimizing them. These pages play an important role in letting customers (and search engine spiders) know more about you, the products and services you sell, and most importantly, the benefits associated with doing business with you. Invest in your secondary pages. Use keyword-rich copy to expand your reach or simply to include niche topics that your competition isn't exploiting yet.
- If your keywords repeat throughout your site, this is a sure sign of either poor SEO or no SEO. As a rule of thumb, your pages should target no more than a handful of keywords (two or three, maximum). This gives you room to spread the your chosen key terms throughout your secondary pages. Additionally, using your domain or company name as keywords is a waste of resources. Unless you're in a field where multiple distributors market your brand, you will by default rank well for your domain and company name searches.
- Best SEO practices recommend staying away from highly competitive keywords... and for good reason. It is far more efficient to target less competitive keywords for many reasons. The most important reason is that someone looking for 'xl plus-size sexy halloween costumes' is more likely to purchase than someone searching for 'halloween costumes'. It also takes far less time to rank for the niche key term (or long-tail keyword) than it would to rank for the shorter, more common short-tail keyword. In many cases, you can get as much traffic from multiple long-tail keywords like '2008 volkswagen gti dealership' and '08 new body c class mercedes' as you would from a more competitive impossible-to-rank-for-in-an-efficient-way keyword like 'new cars'. Ultimately, ranking in the top 10 for less competitive keywords generates more quality overall traffic.
- Site maps are an important part of any website, big or small. We do not subscribe to the belief that Google, regardless of what they (or any other major search engine) claim, needs a site map to find your pages although we do understand and appreciate the need for human visitors to effectively navigate throughout your website... and let's face it, we don't always satisfy the needs of every single visitor so we should make simple to go to an index (or site map) and easily find what they are looking for.
- Link building is a very important part of your SEO campaign however many people make the mistake of driving all linked in traffic to their home pages. This is unbalanced and unnatural and can hurt your chances of ranking higher than a competitor with a more natural and organic inbound linking.
- On the topic of linking, it is important to diversify link text. When every website linking to you uses the term 'best blue widgets' the links look very unnatural and the search engines take notice. Here at SWISSLOGIC, we provide you with a variety of keyword-rich anchor texts designed for each specific page. When possible, we stay away from incoming links that display our clients domain name (reason above). Instead, we aim to get people to link to us using suggested keyword-rich phrases and page descriptions.
- A big misconception of SEO is that SEO is a set-it-and-forget-it solution. SEO is the acronym for search engine optimization. By definition, it means the ongoing improvement of your website to consistently increase ranking for specific key terms and phrases. If your website has not been analyzed within the past six months to make sure you're still targeting the correct key terms, then it's time to research some new words and confirmation that the ones targeted are still relevant. If you do not have a database of websites linking to you, it's time you started. It is good practice to regularly communicate with your link partners. Letting them know you appreciate the "link love" and that you're also willing to help them if they need it keeps your links active and may even encourage partners to feature more links more prominently and / or upgrade the copy, positioning, etc. SWISSLOGIC link partners are privy to exclusive materials and benefits so they see real added-value in linking to our clients. We also use an analytics program and track the traffic generated from organic search engine listings and link referrals so we know exactly which visits from which sites (or search terms) are converting to sales. In doing this, we know exactly which efforts are paying off best and can determine exactly where to allocate additional resources and attention.
SEO is an efficient and powerful strategy for extreme long-term growth. ROI-wise, SEO cannot be beat. A top listing for a well-searched key term or key phrase can pay off many times over yet there are many mistakes that business owners, webmasters and even web designers make when implementing a new SEO campaign or optimizing an ongoing SEO strategy. It is for this specific reason that it is difficult to acquire and maintain high ranking on the major search engines for quality keywords.
This is just a sample of some of the more common mistakes people make every day and should therefore serve as a starting point of how to properly develop and maintain an effective SEO strategy.
...back to services
|
