Search Engine Optimization

Wow, how far the SEO industry has come in just a short time! Years ago on-site optimization would allow your website to be visible almost immediately and now some industries truly have to spend a great deal of time and energy to become visible in their search categories but don’t let that scare you. Over time what will happen is that all the bad apples will get weeded out of the system and the businesses and website looking to do it right will be left behind.

If you are not happy with your search engine optimization or marketing let’s take a look as to why things are happening?

Technology Changing
The search engines are changing and so are their algorithms keeping the SEO industry on their toes at all times. What might have worked last year might not work next year. The technology of what we do is rapidly evolving to the point where many business owners are simply having a hard time just keeping up with everything. You have to roll with the punches of the industry otherwise you will be left behind. Education is key to what we do.

More Distraction
There are continuously more and more websites, web pages, content and social platforms creating more and more distractions online in the search results causing more clutter to cloud a website visitor’s vision. Some people are under the impression that they need to put out more in order to stay competitive and that thought process is what is bogging down our online space.

Buying Behaviors
Plain and simple people are changing also. The way people shop around and make purchases have evolved into something much different than it was 3 years ago. People and business mindsets are in a cost cutting mode and have been for a while so it is not entirely your lack of visibility in the search space that might be causing problems for you.

You have to be able to change with our industry otherwise you are going to have a hard time keeping up with all the advancements. Don’t get left behind and start educating yourself on everything that is occurring in our search marketing industry.

This might sound like a funny question but often time’s people really don’t understand what it truly takes on a daily basis to market a company online. The days of writing a press release and an article and sitting back are long gone and with the frequency of new content and material finding its way into the lighting quick search space it really takes a daily effort coupled with intense multi-tasking skills to really get any name out there. Search engine marketing in today’s marketplace calls for daily activities and efforts.

Let’s discuss what you would need to know attempting your own search engine marketing:

On-Site Search Engine Optimization
If you do not have any knowledge regarding keyword research this will be your first step. Optimizing a website is something like a craft and over time your skills will sharpen. The first time around you might be too aggressive and push the boundaries or not aggressive enough. You will first have to learn how to successfully conduct keyword research. You will need to understand just how to step into the shoes of your audience in order to anticipate what types of keywords they might be using to find your similar products or services. Depending on your industry you could very well come up thousands of keywords that you will have to scrub and clean up in order to remove anything that doesn’t belong.

Once this is done you have to go page by page throughout your entire website and target specific keywords for specific pages writing out very tasteful URL structures, meta information and all existing content. Over time you figure out exactly how this should look but if you are just starting off you will want to make sure you get this done right otherwise you could miss out on very valuable traffic.

External Marketing (Link Building)
Link building is something you are never going to stop doing but before you even start you will have to put together some sort of plan. Shooting from the hip every month is just not going to cut it and you have to put together some sort of outline prior to starting so you can track your progress. If you are in an industry that already has a lot going on don’t be surprised if you find yourself putting in some serious man hours to really gain some of those great links you are looking for.

Link building is one of the largest driving forces to increasing rankings and overall branding power in the search engine. In a competitive market or space it will require almost daily efforts to really execute the link building step properly. If you do not have the industry knowledge on how you should properly go about link building your website you could end up link building the wrong way and generate a penalty to your website.

Since link building is never ending and an ongoing process you will need to educate yourself on all new upcoming trends and techniques used by industry professionals.

Social Media Marketing
Social media is something that will be required on a daily basis. If you are in a moderately competitive space it will require even more daily interaction with your audience. Social media marketing has changed the landscape of online marketing for ever. It is an area that went from being a pleasure to a necessity for all businesses. It doesn’t matter if you are a candlestick maker or a hosting company your audience is hanging out on the pages of Twitter, Facebook and more looking to strike up some sort of conversation with you.

Social media marketing requires getting onto these platforms on a daily basis and either striking up conversations or simply responding to inquiries. Writing in a company blog is also a part of social media that also overlaps the search engine optimization space so you cannot neglect this area of marketing. A blog will give you very valuable leverage in the social communities you just have to take the time every week to write. A blog that is not frequently updated can lead to a loss of business and branding so ideally that blog would be updated at least once per/week.

Starting the process of doing your own marketing can get very time consuming so you have to understand what you are getting into when you get going. It is a daily effort that cannot fall by the waist side otherwise it will never sprout like you want it to.

Many website and business owners have a hard time with keyword research for their onsite search engine optimization. If you are a business that only has five or ten pages to your website you are going to have a hard time incorporating every keyword used in your industry. If you are on a budget and you are conducting your own keyword research how do you know whether you have a good keyword on your hands? It can at times get very confusing.

Keywords Should Be Relevant
First try conducting all your keyword research and compile one large spreadsheet of words you can than reduce. Think about each keyword before you delete it and don’t worry so much about search volume just yet. It should be all about relevancy. If a keyword looks nice because of the volume but you do not really offer that product or service than what good is it going to do on your website? If you chose keywords revolving around search volume and not relevancy you could find the completely wrong type of traffic coming over to your website. The only time you should be using keywords that are not 100% relevant but could overlap is if you have absolutely no search volume because you are in a very tight niche.

Keyword Research Competition
You never really want to focus on just targeting single phrase high search volume keywords because that could take a very long time, especially if you are in a very competitive space. Do some searches for keywords you are thinking about targeting and just take a look around and see what is going on. If the first 5 pages of the search results are really jammed up I would consider going in a whole new direction.

Keyword Search Volume
Keyword search volume does not always directly correlate with quality. If you use search volume as a metric to determine which keyword is going on your site you might end up losing out some really great long tail keywords that might have slightly less search volume.

Before you start optimizing your website really think about which keywords you are going to target. Put your marketing hat on and step into your audience’s shoes in order to determine if that keyword is right for your website.