Back to the basics of SEO: The do’s and don’ts

Despite many marketers now realising the importance of a good search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, many are still struggling with the concept.

SEO remains as one of those areas in marketing that is often an afterthought, or left to be outsourced to the experts. But the fact is, it is an important element of the marketing mix that no marketer can ignore.

Today, I wanted to share some tips I’ve found through my boundless hours of internet surfing and a good piece of what not to do on Business Insider and the whitepaper ‘SEO for Marketers’ written by Gregg Holtsclaw, Director, Online Marketing at Delphic Sage.

Back to basics

“SEO suffers from an identity problem,” says Holtsclaw. “In most organizations, SEO is, rightfully, considered to be a marketing tactic. Whether that notion stems from SEO being a hot buzz word, or from the notion that it is “snake-oil,” the simple fact is; SEO is a marketing tactic. And as, any multi-channel retailer can attest too, a sales channel.

“SEO is now a core competency that every single organization must staff for – either internally or outsourced.”

Is calling SEO a core competency too bold?

Without a doubt, there has been an explosion in SEO efforts for companies of all sizes, including companies who almost solely are relying on SEO as their principal marketing vehicle because of a perception of SEO being low cost, long-lasting, and of course, effective.

What to remember when implementing an SEO strategy

The first step you should take in implementing SEO is integrating SEO into your branding plan actively.

To determine if you are actively incorporating SEO into your branding, consider five quick questions:

– Is my brand incorporated into my SEO efforts? Remember, your brand is certainly what you sell…but also your company name and more importantly, your unique value proposition.

– What’s my destination? Microsites are great, and ad companies love to roll them out for clients, but duplicate content on two separate sites, or a series of sub-domains puts you in the same spot regarding SEO-fighting uphill.

– Do I have a Swiss Army knife and duct tape? MacGyver did, and he got out of a lot of tough situations. You should too. Do you have press releases, articles, or relevant content to fix endless troubles that come up?

– Did you un-influence today? The most important aspect of SEO is having lots of great links. Your SEO focus is often about influencing-that is, having great content and getting it links. But…let’s not forget that when you are talking about your brand, sometimes you want to do the reverse, and decrease influence.

What’s my search volume like? Conversions mean more than traffic, and that money is made by conversions, not just random traffic, buzz, or search volume. However, as an indicator, not a final make or break metric, search volume around your brand or tagline should improve with your SEO efforts.

What to do next

Doing search engine submission and just having a site isn’t enough. You have to allow customers to find you easily.

Website modification: This includes adding optimized content to all pages in the website. This is necessary because targeted keywords have to be added in the right density at the right places.

Add tags: Add or make changes to Meta tags, Title tags, H1 tags, H2 tags, all in anchor text, and alt tags for images, after keywords research. Studying the previous month’s keyword usage statistics provided by the major search engines does keyword research based on which the good keywords are decided.

Link building: If you’re targeting the wrong keywords, it doesn’t matter how well you are targeting them, you’re still bringing people to your site who won’t convert.

Keywords: There are so many great keyword research tools out there, so marketers really have no excuse for targeting the wrong terms. Make sure you’re going after the words and phrases that your customers are using when they’re looking for a site just like yours, not the terms you think you’re associated with. You live in your bubble. Your customers don’t.

Audience: It’s not only possible to target the wrong terms, it’s also possible to target the wrong audience. Things you’ll want to ask yourself before you put pen to paper finger to keyboard:

– What are the demographics of your audience?

– What problem/need do they have?

– Where are they in their buying cycle?

– What kind of hooks/prompts do they respond to?

Targeting the right keyword to the right person will have the biggest impact on conversions.

What not to do

Don’t ignore the Meta description: It doesn’t matter if Google uses the Meta description as part of its ranking algorithm or not, it’s still an important part of your content strategy. Your Meta description is the text that appears under your Title in the SERPs. You want it to be enticing enough that someone is going to click on it. That means you need to write it yourself.

Don’t duplicate your content: Google defines duplicate content as “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar”. It may be a result of canonicalization issues, printer-friendly version of pages, article syndication or RSS feeds, full out scraping, or a number of other issues. To prevent your content from being filtered, you want to make sure that only one version of your content is showing.

Don’t let your new CMS strangle it: At some point in your career, you may discover the joy that is switching content management systems. And when you do, before you jam that screwdriver straight into your eye, make sure that your new CMS will uphold the integrity of your site and URLs.

Lastly, times change. Keywords change. Your audience changes. Your site should evolve to reflect that.