SEO: the reality is a well thought through content strategy

There’s no point believing that SEO is some kind of magical set of techniques that will instantly propel your website to top Google positions. That trick vanished long ago.

SEO today is made up of a set of solid good practices and a solid digital marketing strategy.

Getting found on the web today is increasingly about how extensive your ‘web footprint’ is and how well you engage your audience around the subject you profess to be expert in, whether that is a service or a product, and the trust you develop. Where you show up when somebody searches using a keyword related to your business, or who is talking about you publicly on a blog or social media venue. Being found is largely about how well you exploit these media and optimise for them.

Search Engine Optimisation is probably something as a website owner you get fed up hearing or being bugged about. Despite numerous rumors about SEO being dead, we’d like to say that it definitely isn’t dead, just evolving like everything else. Today a more holistic approach is required, encompassed by Digital Marketing.

What is definitely dead are the old practices of keyword stuffing, content spinning, and buying inbound links from nefarious sources. SEO requires a much more considered and professional approach focused on quality content and legitimate link building.

Optimising page code, ensuring it  is technically correct and fast is now a matter of ‘best practices’ and not really something left to the SEO Agency, although they will certainly check this and correct if necessary. It is something that should just be done at the outset by your developer.

SEO today though is far more that just what happens on the page technically and way beyond simple on-page key word considerations. Keeping up with Google’s search algorithm changes is a full time job for SEO’s. Assessing the impact of changes, identifying content requirements and inbound-link opportunities are tasks that can quickly burden a business owner, even for a large company.

 

What We Do To Help You Get Found

Much of our strategy focuses on identifying the content your audience wants to read or solves their particular set of issues. In particular, areas of importance are:

  •  A search strategy for you based on your markets and customer’s searching habits.
  •  Restructuring page content to best suit the search strategy optimisation requirements and overall usability
  •  Taking care of all the technical issues on your pages and your web host
  •  Using best practices to optimize your page code, menus, internal links, meta tags, etc.
  •  Identifying Google friendly linking opportunities through article marketing and blogs relevant to your industry
  •  Developing a search marketing campaign for you
  •  Developing the site content for you based on your core input
  • Reporting back to you on a regular basis with information that means something to your business

How You’re Found Matters

How does anybody find something on the web today? They either ask somebody for a recommendation through a social site or search for it using a search engine like Google or Bing. Don’t forget YouTube though – it’s the second largest search engine.

Most companies trying to generate traffic from the search engines are no stranger to the concept of keyword searches. The act of showing up in a high position for a term related specifically to your business. Traditionally this has required optimising your web site for those same keywords.

Search engines got wise to over optimisation and no longer rely on keyword density as the main determinant of a sites potential search results position.  A page absolutely has to speak to its intended audience in unambiguous terms, limiting its subject to a specific theme or topic.

Search engines are more interested in authority and trust – way harder to spoof. That requires external sources of verification and social proof – other sites that are already trusted by the search engine, linking to your site. You need to appeal to them first and to do that you need to give them a reason. That comes down to great content.

Don’t think for a minute you don’t need to continue to optimise your site – you do, it’s just that it’s now taken for granted, you have to do this as a part of good web site practice. No extra marks for that one, not many at least.

Local Search Optimisation

Local search is something that most people use, often without thinking about the results they are getting back. Google has constantly adjusted it’s algorithm to differentiate search results based on the searchers location. Local Search Marketing is an essential key consideration when optimizing your website. Indeed, local search and mobile search are handled by different search algorithms and need to be specific campaign elements.

Businesses have a huge opportunity to influence the local communities they work in and in so doing create a level of buzz associated with them. This reflected in how people talk about your business in forums, review sites, Twitter, blogs and such. Mentions about your company or its products don’t necessarily require a link back, Google still picks up on these and they count, as does the level of traffic your site generates locally.

Check List for Top Search Result Positions

  • Great content, consistently delivered, creates engagement
  • Well optimized pages and site hierarchy
  •  Optimise for your geographic location
  •  Well thought out and written expert content
  •  Links from higher authority sites
  •  Engage the community and your target audience through social outlets
  •  Article Marketing – write articles about your subject and get them published on relevant sites.
  •  Patience and lots of it.

Do these 8 things and keep doing them and you will see a difference.

Search Marketing

It takes time to progress up the ‘organic’ search results, Google has seen to that. However, in the mean time you can supplement this activity with search marketing, or PPC as it is also known.

PPC campaigns get you visible immediately, even on page one of Google’s search results pages for terms directly relevant to your product or service. It costs though. How much depends on the competitiveness of the search term you want to be found for.

Search marketing using PPC can really deliver solid results depending on how well you manage the campaign.

Call Occam today on: 0330 111 4281

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