Search Engine Optimization

When you actually sit down and map it all out, optimizing a website (even a small one) takes a lot of work! Once you’re done with the actual on-site SEO, there is still link building to contend with, and I would argue that link building never really ends if you want to succeed in the long run. For site owners looking to manage their own SEO, it can get very overwhelming very quickly! But there is no need to panic. Here are 3 ways you can keep your SEO from overrunning your day.

1. Weigh time vs. return.
This is a very important tip for e-commerce site owners to think about. Let’s say your e-commerce site has 5,000 pages. I can speak from experience and say that optimizing 5,000 pages is not an easy or quick task. You can easily spend 50 hours combing your way through each page on keyword research alone. Tack on another 50 hours to actually write unique Meta data and optimize the content and you’re looking at 100+ hours of work!

For e-commerce sites, it’s important to weigh time vs. return so your SEO doesn’t take over your life. Which product pages get the most traffic right now? Which product pages produce the most revenue for your company? These are the pages you should focus on at the beginning. It is going to be worth your time to invest in the optimization of these pages because they provide the most value for your company as is. You can roll out the rest of your site’s newly optimized pages in batches over time. This way every page gets optimized but you don’t spend every waking moment of the next month worrying about it.

2. Take your campaign one step at a time.
I recently wrote a post about the SEO hierarchy of needs. To briefly recap, the SEO hierarchy of needs looks something like this: Content–> Keyword Research–> On-site Optimization–> Link Building. You shouldn’t move onto the next level until the first one is completely finalized! Jumping around from step to step is the easiest way to overlook important elements of your SEO.

For instance, if you don’t finish properly optimizing your site before you begin your off-site link building campaign, you are sending visitors to a site that isn’t prepared to handle an increase in traffic, nor does it have the tools in place to convert them once they arrive. Your great link building will actually hurt your SEO in the long run if your site isn’t optimized first. And how can you properly optimize your site if you haven’t conducted thorough keyword research on a page-by-page basis? SEO is a long term process; there is no reason to rush through each phase.

3. Get the fundamentals in place first.
Everyone is always on the lookout for the latest and greatest in SEO. But site owners shouldn’t be worrying about advanced SEO techniques unless they have the fundamentals soundly squared away. Make sure you have a clear definition of what white hat and black hat SEO are so you don’t accidentally annoy the search engines and find yourself facing a penalty. Take some time and train yourself to write a new blog post three times a week before you start worrying about how much you’re going to charge for ad space on your blog. Attend a few SEO training courses or free webinars and make sure you have the basics covered!

For many companies across all industries, these last few months of the year get very busy very quickly. Strategies are being created, budgets are getting approved, performances are graded and ROI is evaluated. Everyone is getting ready for the big push into the first quarter of next year. Since SEO is so long term, it makes sense to start thinking about your 2012 campaign now and make sure everything is in order for the new year.

Make sure that your SEO is ready to go in 2012 with these 4 tips:

1. Revisit your keyword research
Very few sites nail keyword research perfectly the first time. Just because a certain keyword gets X amount of search volume each month that doesn’t guarantee you’ll reap the benefits. Contrarily, a keyword you didn’t have much faith in when you started out might be over delivering. While certain keywords may look like they should have performed well for your site, now is the time to see if they really have. What keywords are performing as you expected them to? Which ones are underperforming? Are you seeing any trends that indicate new keywords (ones you didn’t purposefully target) are delivering a steady amount of traffic to your site?

Search behavior evolves over time, which means keywords that worked well in 2011 might not behave the same in 2012. Don’t be afraid to retarget new keywords, but make sure you are making changes based on your site’s analytics! You don’t want to remove a keyword that was working well by accident because you wanted to try something new.

2. Update your website content
What is your company doing new in 2012? Are you launching a new product? You need to make sure that new product page is up and running and connected via internal links to the rest of your site. Is your marketing department getting a new VP? You might need to add their bio to the “About Us” or “Management” page. Are you going to create a social profile for them that is associated with your company? Maybe you’re running a few end-of-the-year deals. These specials need to be added and removed from your site at the right time; you don’t want to be promoting your Thanksgiving Special well past Christmas. Now is the time to make sure your website and content accurately reflects the current position of your company.

3. Brainstorm blog/article topics
The number one problem most companies have with content marketing is coming up with topics. Start 2012 off right and start brainstorming now! If you feel like your own topic well is running dry, don’t be afraid to turn to your coworkers and employees for inspiration. For example, your customer service or sales team members deal with your target audience on a daily basis. Ask them to write down every question they get asked from a current or potential client. Each of those questions can be the starting point for a blog post.

You could also signup for your competitor’s newsletter or blog’s RSS feed. Since they target the same audience as you, those topics are probably right on point. What nuggets can you extract from their posts (never just copy!) and take your own, unique stance on. You can also get a good idea for what they aren’t writing about, an opportunity for you to dominate an unclaimed niche!

You can also ask your customers directly. Post questions on your social profiles and see what your target audience is interested in learning more about.

4. Run a link audit
A link audit is a good way to get an in-depth look at the link portfolio you’ve built up in 2011. Where are the majority of your links coming from? Are you top heavy in one category and light in another? Remember, the search engines like to see a diverse approach to link building. Not only does it demonstrate your commitment to white hat link building, it also protects your site in the long run. The more sources of traffic you have the less vulnerable your site is. For instance, is Google were to decide that all blog comment links were black hat, would your site lose the majority of its link portfolio?

Not only does it show you the links you’ve intentionally accrued over the year with blog comments, video marketing, social media marketing and so forth, it can also show you the natural links your site has earned. Since you have no control over these natural links, it’s important to identify the source of each one and determine if it will help or hurt your site in the coming year. If a lot of your natural links are coming from spammy, low quality sites or “bad” sites (pornography, gambling, etc) then you might have been the victim of a reverse SEO attack. Reverse SEO involves creating a spammy site and then linking to your competitors so the search engines think they are involved in black hat link building. You need to get a link building baseline so you know what kind of work you need to do in 2012.

Obviously every site wants to rank well for their chosen keywords. The better a site ranks, the more traffic it is likely to get from the search engines. But focusing solely on where your site ranks as the end-all-be-all goal of SEO can make website owners cut corners in order to artificially boost their rank. Taking such a narrow minded approach to SEO will actually limit the success of your website. The real goal of SEO should be to increase the amount of traffic being delivered to your site. Focusing on generating traffic, as opposed to rank position, will help ensure that you take a diversified, white hat approach to your SEO.

Watch this week’s SEO video tip from Nick Stamoulis here!