“True SEO is an amalgamation of many functions, and ultimately, they all need to be logical and consistent.” Via SearchEngineLand
Yes, yes, and yes. All together now, YES!
Especially in 2014, SEO brings together solid web writing (with best SEO practices in mind), meta data, social signals and technical SEO factors like site speed together as a whole.
That’s why there’s no “magic pill” and a limited budget doesn’t buy you much. SEO takes skilled writing, skilled technicians and social media marketing to have a positive effect. In fact, the more of each the better in most cases.
Here are 6 basics to help you understand the bigger picture.
3 “On Page” SEO Elements Every Website Needs:
- A Good Keyword Strategy – this is the foundation of your entire site. The web designers will hate me but spend less time choosing fonts and more time defining strategic keyword terms and assigning them to your web pages as appropriate. Don’t make these up. Use software programs like Ubersuggest, Wordtracker and even Google’s Keyword Planner to refine them.
It’s my experience that many of my clients don’t really understand keyword terms and how to use them, here’s a Slideshare that may help.
- Meta Data Titles and Descriptions – once your keyword terms are assigned to each page – remember each page gets a separate keyword term—the copy can be written including the meta titles and descriptions.
Think of these as your advertisement. When they showcase the benefit of working with you as well as using the same keyword term your prospects use, you “get the click” to your website.
Remember, each page is an individual, and as such need their own meta titles and descriptions so they’ll be easier to find by your potential clients.
Here’s an example of a meta-description as it appears on the search engine result pages (SERP’s).
- Internal linking—Make it easy for search engines to know that each of your web pages go together. The way to do that is to link to one another as appropriate. For example, if I’m running a social media training program, I may write a blog post about what we’ll cover and link to the sign up page. That lets Google know the two items are related.
3 “Off Page” SEO Tools
- Google Analytics Linked with Webmaster Tools—With these tools, you can track how your visitors found your site and what they did there among other metrics. This is essential in knowing whether or not your site visitation is increasing or which pages aren’t addressing your visitor’s needs as well as you may think so you can adjust them as needed.
- Loading Time – If your website is slow to load, your visitors won’t wait around for it and you’ll get “demerits” from Google. Not sure about your site? You can use Pingdom to test it. The faster it loads the better. We’re talking less than 5 seconds.
If you’re using WordPress, here are 19 ways you can increase your site speed.
- Social Media –Social isn’t a magic bullet to solve all your business woes but without it, your business is disappearing from the competitive landscape. Think I’m being overly dramatic? Think about it–your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. pages may rank higher than your website in organic search. Which do you think your prospects will find first?
These are only 6 items out of the roughly 200 “signals” used to rank your site. As you can see, SEO is a constantly shifting landscape incorporating many different elements.
What do you think is the most confusing part of it? Please share in the comments below.
