The main purpose of SEO is to increase the popularity of your website by increasing the number of links that point to that website: essentially, SEO is all about strategically increasing the number of “incoming” or “inbound” links.
SEO can be confusing and can also be difficult to understand…and if you are considering hiring an online marketing company to help market your website on the Internet via Search Engine Optimization (SEO), take some time to understand how SEO works so you can gain most benefit from your SEO campaigns. (PS – If you haven’t read our introductory article about SEO, take a moment to read What is Search Engine Optimization).
Visual Overview of SEO
SEO follows a structured and methodical approach. Most SEO companies will use variations of the above process but ultimately, it is the result that matters.
Step 1 – SEO Audit
Various tools are used to examine the structure and construction of your website and to determine its search engine rank and to look at the factors that determine its rank.
- Design Review: whether your website is visually pleasing with an attractive, uncluttered and relevant design – i.e. look and feel
- Structural Analysis: how well the website is constructed and how easy is it to find information without having to hunt for it
- Content Analysis: content relevance and authoritativeness; also check for content duplication on your website
- SEO Metrics: determine your website’s current rank and other metrics such as traffic stats, visitor behavior, social media popularity and much more
- On-Page Analysis: type and number of changes required (if any) to the actual website itself to make is search engine friendly
- Social Presence: social media and social channel presence; look for relevant social network profiles and how they link to your website
- Benchmarking: capture initial stats & metrics so these can be compared against results of ongoing SEO campaigns to track the effectiveness of SEO
- Estimates: estimate of effort required to (1) update the website and (2) to reach the intended SEO goal(s) and (3) duration of ongoing activities
Step 2 – Keyword Strategy, Research & Optimization
Keywords (also known as search terms) are at the heart of any SEO campaign. Prior to startingSEO, keywords are researched, identified and locked down: most Internet users type keywords (search terms) to locate information in search engines and that is how they will find your website as well. Keyword research and optimization depends on a few factors:
- Products/Services: what services you offer and what products you are looking to sell
- Competitors: it is especially important is to look at competing websites to find out keywords they are promoting and how that ties in with your website
- Target Audience: the type of user you wish to target (to find online trends that may affect that particular user base) so keywords can be adjusted
- Content Strategy: whether you already written the content, or whether it is work in progress and who is writing the content (see article on copywriting)
Step 3 – On-page (on-site) optimization
On-page or on-site optimization refers to structural updates or changes that need to be made to the website itself, hence the term “on-page” or “on-site”
A website that is being considered for SEO generally requires some updates to make it moreSEO friendly. Such changes can include
- Optimize Keywords: update website source code (meta data), title tags, content and other areas to include relevant keywords
- Optimize Content: update and edit content, as required, to include selected keywords; generate inline links to optimize content for Bing
- Structural Modifications: optimize the structure so that it is SEO friendly; rename and optimize internal page and URL names and more
- Internal and Links: make sure that there are no broken internal or external links; update/create internal links as required
- Website Performance Optimization: optimize website load times to boost performance; reduce image size and overall page weight, as needed
- Analytics: add analytics (visitor tracking) to track visitor search patterns, activities, visits and much more – best to use Google Analytics or similar tool
Step 4 – Off-page (off-site) Optimization
Off-page optimization refers to activities focused on increasing the popularity of a website that are external to the website itself, hence the term “off-page” or “off-site”
Off-page optimization is labor intensive because it is an ongoing part of SEO. The goal is to organically grow the popularity of a website by increasing the number of incoming links, social media mentions, visitor traffic and other activities. Search engine algorithms are extremely sophisticated and search engines are known to blacklist website optimizers that engage in nefarious SEO practices (also known as spamming the search engine) so it is best to do SEO carefully, ethically and properly. Off-page activities include:
- Manual Link Building: increasing inbound links to your website via directory submissions, one-way link building, direct and indirect links and much more
- Content Syndication: additional links obtained via article syndication, video syndication, PR (press release) posting and more
- Blog & Forum Posting: depending on your industry and products and services, blog and forum posting can lead to more incoming links
- Social Bookmarking: social bookmarking is a powerful technique to generate more links to your website via sites such as Digg, Reditt, Stumbleupon etc
- Social Media Optimization: social media profiles on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and others to create relevant and meaningful inbound links
- RSS Feeds: Allowing people to syndicate (make material available to multiple other websites) content from your website
Step 5 – Monitoring and Reporting
Monitoring and reporting are an critical part of SEO – it is important to watch and track the effectiveness of your SEO campaign and the results it is producing. There are many tools that are available to monitor traffic, search patters, visitor trends and their behavior on your website. Such tools also provide data about what keywords (search terms) are being used to find your website and lots more. SEO Reports are probably the most required “output” from your SEO company – these reports will show you how well your website is doing and what to expect in the future.
- Analytics Monitoring: track and view analytics reports to make sure SEO is producing the proper results
- Keyword (search term) Monitoring: monitor and track keywords and adjust them in your SEO campaigns for best results
- SEO Reports: produce regular SEO reports to track the effectiveness of the SEO work
- Ongoing Follow-ups: Conference calls or meetings to discuss previous SEO results and planned activities
Conclusion
To the uninitiated, SEO can be a little daunting; however, it is our hope that we have simplified the process so it is easy to understand and track especially if you are considering SEO for your website.
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