Good search engine optimization, or SEO, is the culmination of many things done right. It’s more than just keyword rankings and traffic. That’s part of it, sure. But it’s also about getting qualified traffic that converts. And although I’m sure that you’ve heard the phrase “Content is King!” over and over again (and I’m not disagreeing. A solid content strategy is a big part of SEO), there’s more to it than that.
DESIGN
Even if you have the most well written, entertaining, and informative content around – if your website is poorly designed, there’s a very good chance that your visitors are not going to convert. A well designed website will not only reinforce your brand’s message and story, it will get your visitors to convert. There’s more to designing a great website than just good looks. It needs to be easy to navigate. It needs to contain strong, appropriate calls-to-action. It needs to make it EASY for the user to get to the information that they want. Does your website do all that?
TECHNOLOGY
So, you’ve hired the most talented designer that you could find and they built you a website that represented your brand perfectly. They did usability studies and even held focus groups to make sure that they were on point. They implemented the perfect blend of branding, user-experience, and conversion strategies. And then they hosted it on the same server that they’ve been running since 2008, located in a friend’s closet somewhere.
If your website isn’t hosted in a reliable server environment, you’re losing opportunities. Nothing frustrates users more than having to wait for a slow loading web page to render. Not only that, but Google has made it very clear that they’re paying attention to load times and those that perform well will be rewarded.
CONTENT
Alright – now we’ve got a well designed website that not only portrays your brand in the best light possible, but it’s optimized for conversions. You even have it hosted on a server that loads the site in under 3 seconds . I guess you’re done, right?
Wrong.
Now’s the time to make sure that all of the content on your website is optimized for both maximum user engagement and search engine exposure. There’s a bit of an art to achieving that balance, but it’s necessary. Page titles, meta descriptions, headings, body copy – all of it (and more) needs to be artfully crafted. But, once you’ve got it dialed in, NOW you’re done. Right?
Hardly.
Now the fun really starts. The last thing that you want to do is let your beautiful and fast new website become nothing more than a static information center. You didn’t come this far to have a glorified brochure!
Not only should you be updating your website whenever you release new products or services (or make changes to existing products), but you should use your website to really connect with your customers and prospects. The easiest way to do this? A blog.
Use your website’s blog to keep your customers up to do date. Everything from industry best practices to fun things happening around your office is fair game here. People want to feel a connection to the brands that they give they their hard earned money to and this is your opportunity to start that conversation.
SOCIAL
Alright, so you’ve this new website, with all of this great new content. Now all we need to do it sit back and wait for the traffic flood-gates to open!
Nope. Now’s the time to start developing your social media presence. Get that website in front of your followers! Share it and encourage conversation. A great Social Media Marketing strategy is more than just shameless self promotion, though. Make sure that you’re interacting with others and sharing content from other informative resources, too.
In addition to more overall exposure, a good SMM campaign can help you kick-start your link-earning efforts, as well. What is link-earning, you ask? I’ll let Rand Fishkin explain it for you.
All of this is really just scratching the surface and each of these sections could really be a separate blog post (or blog series!) but for now, I’ll leave you with this:
Good SEO is just good marketing. It’s leveraging technology to reinforce the good things that you’re doing. It’s good branding, good promotion, good partnerships.
