Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the parameters in which your website is built. It is the content, the structure, the science and the meat of your website. Now I’ve seen companies come to us and boast about how they’ve invested thousands upon thousands of dollars into their website’s SEO.
Once I look at the rankings for pages, keywords and the overall website I’m very rarely impressed or shocked by the results. In fact, in most cases I’m very saddened that the client has invested so much capital into the SEO without any significant results and barely even knows it.
SEO is without a doubt valuable, but to what extent? Without diving into the abyss that is SEO terms, there are some core basics to SEO improvement.
1) The SEO Framework
This is the actual frame work for your website. Each page should be SEO formatted for a focus keyword, a meta description, url tags, H1, H2 and H3 headings to mirror the focus keyword of each page. Additionally, images should contain ALT attributes and ALT text to ensure that even if the page doesn’t load correctly it is legible and searchable.
If your website uses WordPress, which most websites do, then simply download the Yoast Plugin to assist in your SEO changes for the framework. It will guide you each step of the way.
2) The Content
To further improve your SEO scores and ranks on Google and other search engines, you must reinforce your website with content relating to your focus keywords and pages. This is where blogs get their primary value from. Often times, clients come to us asking “why should we even get a blog? It’s a waste of time since we’re in business-to-business”.
Google and other search engines rank you based off of keyword relevancy and activity on your website pages. So content is a crucial part of your SEO strategy.
3) The Traffic
Although you’re going to hate this statement, digital advertising is another crucial part in your SEO rankings. Google absolutely loves user activity on your website. The more new traffic you have landing on your website pages, the more relavant Google will rank your website.
The easiest and most cost-effective way to achieve this can very. Most commonly, Google AdWords can be used as an advertising channel to drive mass traffic for a small investment. The quality of this traffic will take a hit if you wish to drive a low cost-per-click campaign aimed at generating big chunks of traffic. And on the other hand, if you have a larger advertising budget, you can accomplish strong SEO improvement and quality lead generation at the same time.
Granted, many of these activities can be done by a novice or junior marketer, such as blogging, while others require more specialized skills such as AdWords and SEO framework. Either way you choose to go, all of these activities must be done in congruence with each other to generate stronger SEO rankings.
But there is not need to spend countless hours and dollars for an SEO specialist to do one of these or 2 of these acitvities over and over again with limited results.
The Benefits are simple...
- Better Google and Search Engine Ranking for Organic Searches
- Lower Bounce Rate for Website Users
- Improved Organic Lead Generation