Introduction Are you setting aggressive, yet reasonable goals for your SEO program? Are you consistently measuring and tracking your results, but not seeing progress as soon as expected? If you are experiencing any of these conditions in your business, you re not alone. When assessing the quality of an SEO campaign, many online marketers encounter this type of frustration. In fact, over 75% of respondents in our First Annual Digital Marketing Survey have reported similar difficulties. In this ebook, we will help answer the questions circling your SEO program that you haven t been able to solve just yet. You will discover how to: Follow 5 key steps to initiate and run an effective SEO program Target your low-hanging fruit and translate it into quick wins for your business Tackle the competition with appropriate SEO analysis and revenue tracking tools 2
How Do Search Engines Crawl the Web? Discovery The first step to your discovery in the digital marketing space is realizing what is at stake for your business. There are more than 3 billion searches on Google each day. Search engine use is growing rapidly as more people are turning to the internet when it comes to researching products, comparing service offerings, and purchasing online. What does this mean for your business? Competition within the marketplace is living online. As a marketer for your company, it is your job to ensure your website is found by prospects before your competition. Your online marketing success boils down to one key fact If you are not ranking on Page 1, you are invisible to most searchers. Even if you are currently ranking on Page 1 for your selected keywords, SEO is an ongoing practice that you must monitor and manage on a regular basis. Without continual SEO engagement, your site may slip down the page below your strongest competition or even drop to Page 2. It is important to realize that your competitors are participating in the same work to optimize their websites on the search engines. Throughout this ebook, we will reveal SEO best practices and what you need to do to stay ahead. If you are not ranking on Page 1, you are invisible to most searchers. Crawling Search spiders are constantly crawling the internet, indexing and connecting thematic content and links within your website to other relevant sources in the web. The job of a search spider is to discover new and updated pages on the web on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Indexing As search spiders compile data from each crawl, drawing more information into their memory, data centers will accumulate the records over time and build a history about your site. Websites with a long history will have a greater amount of data collected by the search engines. This means that your website will hold more SEO credit and value than that of a younger site Google is just starting to learn. 3
The results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) are determined by relevancy of your site s content, keywords, links, and more than 200 other factors considered by the Google algorithm. The goal for Google is to serve only the most relevant sites to each searcher s unique query. Therefore, you need to be sure you are trying to rank on the most optimal keywords and phrases for your business. As we delve into productive keyword research and selection, keep these key tips at the top of your optimization checklist to increase the crawl and index rate of your site: 1. Submit and verify an XML sitemap through Webmaster Tools 2. Reduce the click-depth required to visit deeper pages within the site 3. Earn more inbound links from outside sources How Do I Choose the Right Keywords? Conduct Research A common question that many marketers face at the start of their SEO campaign is: What keywords should I optimize for? Start by investigating Google Insights to learn about and compare long-term search trends. You can see which keywords people are most frequently using to find your type of product or service. Use these statistics to your advantage by capitalizing on the words or phrases that are being used by your target audience. 4
Content silos will support and enhance your site s thematic structure by: 1. Comprehensively and naturally grouping pages around keywords 2. Linking pages within the same groups 3. Providing a cohesive and index-able crawling experience for search spiders Keyword Targeted Page project management software online collaboration tools online project management software project management for smartphone collaboration tools for iphone online project management for android pm tools for smb project management for small business enterprise project management software global pm software solutions Home page Mobile solutions Small business Enterprise Utilize another free Google tool, Keyword Tool External, which will help you gauge the competition on each keyword and the popularity of the search term. Keep in mind that a balanced combination of broad match and long-tail terms is essential for an effective and productive keyword basket. Long-tail keywords will attract the most targeted traffic to your site, while broad match terms will bring a healthy volume of relevant visitors. Search volume will be significantly lower on long-tail than on broad terms, but if the terms are optimized correctly on your site, you will rank well and draw visitors who are likely to convert. Develop a Targeting Process After selecting your full set of keywords, carefully assign each word or phrase to dedicated pages of your site. For best optimization results, it is ideal to integrate 3-5 keywords into each page of your site. This will create an organized and even distribution of your keywords at each structural level. Next, focus on developing unique, naturally-composed content to surround and strengthen the value of your keyword iterations. Approach each page as a mini website and apply the same SEO implementation technique. This strategy will enable you to get the highest branding, ranking, and ROI success from your optimization initiatives. 5
How Do Inbound Links Help SEO? Outside sources are the most powerful types of links you can aggregate to increase SEO value. They serve as votes for your website on the search engines and are especially helpful when coming from other SEO-strong sites. For example, if your website is mentioned in the New York Times, you will receive a large vote of SEO credit. If your website is mentioned by a smaller website, or perhaps one not as well known, you will still receive good SEO credit. However, this link will not be valued at the same level as a link from the New York Times. Nevertheless, it is important to actively share your content with outside sources to gain more links pointing to your site. Dedicate a part of your marketing team to produce a healthy stock of on-page content on a frequent basis, publish press releases, and engage in social media. In order to gain sustainable SEO value from inbound links, your website material needs to be supported by other channels, including: Whitepapers or ebooks Company blog Newsletters Case studies Press releases Facebook & LinkedIn posts Tweets YouTube videos 6
What Should I Do with Images? Even if your website features media-rich content including Flash objects, you can still optimize for the search engines. In fact, videos are powerful online marketing tools that have become increasingly more effective in boosting SEO. A wellexecuted video, coupled with the right SEO strategy, has proved to help raise a website ranking on the search results page. In addition, images can be optimized just as well as text on your site. For instance, use Alt Tags and show descriptive keyword texts when visitors hover over images. Search spiders will capture and index the keywords relating to the images, increasing the SEO credit on that particular page. Similarly, Descriptive File Names will have the same SEO strengthening effect. Ensure that the images and videos you are uploading to your site have file names that are distinctive and keyword-rich. This will further establish SEO value on your media elements. Lastly, using Captions appropriately around or near images will weave your website theme cohesively together between your media and text content. To take your image optimization strategy one step further, utilize an XML Sitemap Extension to notify search spiders to specifically crawl and index your image and media elements. This effort will simply make your site s imagery more visible to the search engines. 7
How Can I Track Results and Measure ROI? Set Goal Values: In your Analytics account, define conversions for each of your business goals. For a B2B company, a conversion may be defined as filling out the Contact Us form or hitting the Download button to receive a new ebook. For a B2C company, the conversion goal funnel will likely comprise of an e-commerce form to make a purchase or sign up for a product demo. Visualize Your Funnel: Utilize the Funnel Visualization feature in your Analytics account as it relates to the goal paths you have set up. Observe where visitors are abandoning goal paths and analyze the data to determine why. You may need to edit your messaging or simply your web-to-lead forms in order to improve conversion rates. Segment Keyword Performance: Analyze which keywords are leading to the most conversions and work to re-enforce them in your links and on-page content. Consider removing poor-performing keywords from your campaign. As best practice, revisit your keywords and compare performance on a regular basis. You want to avoid a high bounce rate on keywords that are not driving relevant, qualified traffic to your site. 8
Analyze Market Trends: Start by comparing your metrics to past data and observe possible seasonality trends. Perhaps more people search for your services in the spring or summer months and you see a decrease in traffic during the holiday season. This is common for B2B companies, while the opposite may be true for B2C companies specializing in retail where Black Friday and Cyber Monday mark the most profitable periods in annual sales. It is helpful to track your site s non-paid and non-branded traffic trends on a regular basis. Try using the free Google Insights and Google Trends tools to provide statistical support for your analysis. Use Online Attribution Management Tools: Have you ever wondered how your customers found your site, which path they took to become your loyal customer, and how long that process took? By attributing search behavior to your business sales lifecycle, you will be able to track prospects step-by-step from the first marketing touch all the way to the closed deal. Attribution management allows for 360-degree tracking from the initial keyword search to the closed opportunity. By consolidating data from your Analytics account and customer relationship management (CRM) system into a unified view, your team will have ability to gain invaluable insight into the effectiveness of your lead to sales funnel, as well as the SEO strength of your website. To learn more about which attribution management tool may work best for your business, contact us at any time and we will be pleased to help. 9
Conclusion: SEO is constantly evolving. By taking advantage of readily available tools and resources online, many of them free, you can easily keep up with the latest search marketing trends. Demonstrate the ROI of your digital marketing initiatives by consistently measuring outcomes and reallocating budget to the highest performing channels. This is imperative to prove your investment is worthwhile and to provide valuable results for your business. Inquire about our customized website analysis by requesting a session online or emailing us at seo@webmarketing123. The analysis is composed of a one-on-one discovery session with one of our digital experts to walk through your digital marketing framework, an opportunity analysis, and a competitive keyword report. Webmarketing123 wants to help you achieve your digital marketing goals. Whether this means boosting your conversions, optimizing your marketing budget, or engaging prospects online, we can help you discover proven solutions that are right for your business and your performance goals. If you are interested in a customized analysis of your current AdWords account, please contact us at contact@webmarketing123.com. We will be pleased to discuss your current business challenges and navigate a path for achieving your unique digital marketing goals. 10