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One element to a holistic Search Engine Marketing strategy ... Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about relevance. The more relevant your website is, the more visible your website will be on the search engine results pages. It’s not enough to simply build and publish a beautiful website, but you probably already know that because you’re here reading this. Essentially, there are three aspects of search engine optimization: content, incoming links and the technical aspects of your website.
Content Relevance
The first thing you need to take a look at is content. From our experience, If you're serious about search engine optimization and embarking on either an outsourced engagement or handling it in-house you need to ask yourself five questions:
- Is my content relevant?
- Is it keyword rich or is it “blather” rich?
- Is my content dense?
- Is there enough to impress a visitor that you are an authority on the subject?
- Is my content addressing all visitors?
- Is it connecting with visitors at the various stages of the buying process?
- Is my content compelling?
- Does it solve the visitor’s problem?
- Is my content leading visitors to take a desired action?
- Did you remember to ask for the order?
Address these questions and you’ll be nearly half way home to a successful outcome.
Link Reputation
The next element to address in website optimization is improving your link reputation. Links are hyperlinked text that reside on third party websites that point to your website. Google’s ranking algorithm is based largely on the number and quality of inbound or back links pointing to your website. In two words, it’s a “popularity contest”. The more (and better) links you have, the more popular you are. Or in Google’s eyes, the more relevant your website is.
There are several ways to improve your link reputation: - Submitting your site to relevant web directories – general and specific
- Public relations – submitting relevant company news to news sites
- Business partnerships – links from distributors, partners and vendors
- Blog posts – links from your own and other publishers
- Profile building – building company profiles on social media sites
- Negotiated links – placing links on relevant sites for compensation
Each one of the above mentioned link building tactics, if employed correctly, can make a marked improvement in your search engine rankings. If not employed correctly, can be a huge wasted expense.
Technical Issues
The third and final aspect of search engine optimization is technical. If your website code is diluting the relevance of your content, or making it hard for the search engines spiders to determine the relevance of your site, then your visibility is diminished on the search engine results pages. You’ll want to identify and address the some of the common obstacles we witness occasionally, which include:
- Sites built with frames
- Improper use of style sheets
- Improper use of java script
- URLs with more than three parameters
- Improperly authored meta-data
- Relying solely on java script menu links
Consider the information provided on our website as a 35,000 ft. level view of SEO. While any of the above may not appear to be rocket science, good SEO is about doing relatively simple things correctly and methodically ... day after day.
We invite you to download our SEO White Paper for more detailed information. If you' re ready to speak to one of Emagine’s Search Engine Strategists, then please call us at 1-877-530-7993 to schedule an SEO consultation.
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