When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), and
internet marketing as a whole, we often discover that new clients come to us
with a handful of experiences, ideas, and impressions. Some of them are useful,
while others might be outdated or outright incorrect.
That’s understandable – it’s hard enough for us to keep up
with SEO and online marketing from within the industry. For someone trying to
make the most of their campaigns while also having to keep their attention on a
full-time job or dozens of responsibilities, it can be overwhelming.
Luckily, you don’t have to keep up with every technical
detail or algorithm change to make the most of search engine optimization. To
help you understand why, and focus on what’s actually important, we present to
you our advanced guide to SEO and internet marketing. Let’s look at what you
need to know, step-by-step, beginning with the basics…
Know Your Market and
Your Strengths
The solid base of any strong SEO and online marketing
campaign isn’t a set of technical tools or complicated ideas; it’s a thorough
understanding of your strengths as a business and the needs of your most
important customers.
Simple as it might seem, everything that comes later in the
search engine optimization and online marketing process flows from these two
pieces of information. So, it’s imperative that you begin with a little bit of
research or brainstorming if that’s what it takes to arrive at the right
conclusions. Otherwise, you could rush into an SEO campaign that isn’t ever
going to produce the results are hoping for.
Build a Solid Website
Believe it or not, a website can be “flimsy” from a coding
perspective. When that happens, your pages are virtually invisible to Google’s
search engine spiders.
A sturdy website is fast, lives on a reliable hosting
server, and doesn’t have any extraneous HTML code or outdated plugins. A flimsy
website, on the other hand, is created from a bloated template and has images,
links, and other elements that haven’t been optimized for search.
You can’t expect to stand out in search rankings if you’re
working with a website that is never going to seem credible to customers or
search platforms, so start with the right foundation.
Get an SEO Audit From
an Experienced Web Design Team
Even on a well-built website, small errors can indicate to
Google that pages aren’t being maintained carefully enough. Issues like broken
links, duplicated content, or a lack of mobile compatibility can all harm your
search visibility.
An experienced web design team can audit your site, looking
for problems that aren’t visible to the naked eye. In addition to scouring your
HTML for hidden technical issues, we can evaluate your pages and content the
way a search engine would, finding lots of areas for immediate improvement and
growth.
Begin SEO With
Intensive Keyword Research
Ultimately, success in search engine optimization means
achieving a high ranking on Google and drawing dozens, hundreds, or even
thousands of good prospects to your pages every week. None of that is going to
work, though, if you don’t know what your best customers are actually searching
for when they go online.
That’s why every strong search engine optimization campaign
has to begin with intensive keyword research. It helps to not only identify the
perfect terms and phrases for you and your creative team to target, but also the
level of competition and buying intent that come with each one. Beginning SEO
work without good keyword research is like taking a road trip without a map or
directions. It’s just not an efficient way to reach your bottom line
destination.
Optimize Your Website
for Search Visibility
Once you know what buyers are looking for on Google and the
other search engines, you can begin to optimize your site for those terms and
phrases. That means ensuring they show up in the right areas, particularly page
titles, main headings, internal links, and meta descriptions.
With the help of a good web design team you can easily find
the right spots for each keyword or search term, and be sure they feature
prominently without being overused. This part of the search engine optimization
process is both art and science, and it needs to be handled correctly if you
want buyers to find you.
Create an Online
Conversion Plan
You should always remember that success in search engine
optimization isn’t just about achieving a high ranking on Google, but turning
that visibility into new revenue in the form of leads, sales, phone calls, or
walk-in visits. It doesn’t do your business any good to just have more people
visit your site and leave.
That’s why, as part of your SEO campaign, you need to
develop an online conversion plan. You have to have a sense of who will be
coming to your website, what you want them to find, and why they will be
compelled to take the next step. If any of those answers are missing, you’ll
struggle to make an impact on your bottom line the matter how optimized your
site is.
Generate Search
Friendly Content Regularly
Making your website highly visible to search engine spiders
is a good thing, but if you truly want to claim a top spot on Google, you’ll
have to become a regular producer of fresh content. That’s partly because each
new article or blog post you add to your site counts as another page to Google,
and partly because searchers love content that has recently been posted.
Our most successful clients use editorial calendars to keep
their content marketing plans on track. The more you can write and fill the
web, the easier it’s going to be to bring in customers through Google.
Promote Your Website
Away From Google
While this this guide is aimed at business owners who want
to make the most of Google and search engine optimization, there are other
places to promote your company on the internet. You can draw in as many
customers (or more) using Facebook, Twitter, PPC ads, email, and other means.
Many business owners prefer to focus all of their fire on
Google because the payoff is so large. However, the beauty of diversifying your
campaigns is twofold. On the one hand, it keeps you from being completely
dependent on search engines for traffic. And on the other, it gives you more
ways to stay in touch with the prospects who initially find you through the
search listings, making it more likely they’ll do business with you down the
road.
Check Your Web
Analytics and Refine Your Approach
Search trends change over time, new competitors come out of
nowhere, and Google makes adjustments to its algorithms. For all of these
reasons, you should be reviewing your web analytics on a regular basis to
understand where your traffic is coming from, how users are interacting with
your website, and what sort of improvements you can make going forward.
If you stay committed to producing content and refining your
approach, you’ll get more and more visitors over time while turning a greater
percentage of them into leads or buyers each month. In other words, your SEO
campaigns will just keep getting more efficient and profitable. That should be
the goal you’re working towards on a continual basis.
Are You Making the
Most of SEO and Internet Marketing?
If you have been making halfhearted attempts at search
engine optimization, or ignored it all together, now is the time to start being
more visible on Google. Or, if you’ve invested time or money into SEO in the
past but haven’t gotten results, this is your chance to make a fresh start.
The Kinetik IT team in Phoenix has the skills, tools, and
experience to give you the website you need and help you stand out on Google.
No matter where you’re starting from, we can create a workable and affordable
plan that will help you bring in new customers month after month.
To get our creative team working for you, contact us today
and schedule a complementary website review. We’ll take a look through your
pages and, in just a few days, let you know exactly what it will take to take
your company to the next level.
Why wait to start getting more leads and sales? Contact us
now so we can put our experience to work for you!