1. Determine the Words You Want to Compete For
The first step in most marketing campaigns, Search Marketing included, is to start by defining your target audience. Your target audience is a defined set of people to whom you are marketing your product. This is needed to form the right SEO strategy for your company and to determine the keywords you are trying to compete for. Too many campaigns are doomed to fail before they get off the ground as companies focus on keywords that are too broad, don't get enough traffic, or are too competitive to compete for. Your focus keyword list should start broad and use analytics to narrow down to the very best keywords for your business and website to compete on.
Narrow the competition & relevance of broad keywords to include local elements and more specific services. For example, instead of going after 'marketing', we work for 'inbound marketing' and “Denver Marketing company”
What do your customers want? What are their needs that aren’t being met? Knowing these things will help us better define a content strategy and prioritize content to bring to the forefront.
2. Optimize Your Website for Your Focus Keywords
With your strategy in place, it's time to begin implementing your very best optimization vehicle, your website. Every page on your website needs to include the critical optimization elements that help Google understand what each page is about. Each website page needs to have the following elements addressed with a single focus keyword...
Page Title (under 70 characters)
Meta Description (under 155 characters)
H1 & H2 Title Text (break up main content by describing it)
Alt Text (every image needs a title)
Keyword in Content (at least once, bolded)
Build these optimization points in while remembering that you're still talking to humans. Make your strategy user-friendly and work your keywords in naturally while being mindful not to overload any page.
3. Develop an Ongoing Website Content Strategy
When Google put out their Panda algorithm update in 2011 they put out a message to web builders: Don't let your site get stale. That meant that sites will be rewarded for continually improving their content, growing the amount and quality of relevant and resources web pages. If you want your search engine rankings to improve you better build your site out over time.
Keep it fresh and keep it growing by implementing a sound strategy. Add tools, resources, and informative content to help visitors understand how to use your site to educate themselves and understand their options.
Support your primary pages with layers of supporting content pages. Link these pages to the appropriate primary page to pass additional keyword authority accordingly.
Content means more than just your blog. Content covers video, articles, webinars, live chat, lists, how-to guides, and much more. Content should be provided on your site and across the web on channels where your prospects hang out. Use different content types to answer your client's questions and understand their obstacles and provide solutions.
Now that you’ve created high-quality content that your target market needs (and wants) and have attention-grabbing headlines to engage them and encourage them to read further, go back and review everything you wrote. In your review, look for additional places where you can naturally place keywords. Can you switch a sentence around to include a keyword? For example, on a page about marketing automation, “Identify the best customers and convert more” could be changed to “Marketing automation helps you identify the best customers and convert more.” Also, consider whether you can create a keyword phrase by adding a word in front of a keyword? If I have a sentence talking about “marketing campaigns” and “marketing automation” is a keyword for my page, I would add “automated” to “marketing campaigns.” Do several review passes. You may be surprised at what opportunities you miss the first, and even the second time, around.
4. Check out who’s linking back to you.
If no one is linking to you, why should Google? Backlinks (links from other sites back to yours) can be golden, especially if they’re from sites that Google respects. On the other hand, links that Google recognizes as blackhat can negatively affect your search engine rankings. A research study by Moz shows that there’s a direct relationship between quality backlinks and Google search rankings. The higher the quality of your backlinks, the higher your search rankings. Watch this edition of Whiteboard Friday to learn how to build a good process for link acquisition:
Check your backlinks. You can easily run a report using the SEMrush Backlink Checker or Moz Open Site Explorer.
5. Improve User Experience
This is beyond website content, but the good user experience is becoming more and more important in strong SEO rankings. According to Robert Berris in his blog Three UX Principles That Help Your Website Do Its Job Right, “During the last two years, Google has evolved to place a much higher emphasis on sites that deliver quality user experiences across platforms and devices. Though traditional ranking factors are still king, search engine optimization is increasingly becoming user optimization.” So, work with your web developers to be sure that your website is easy and intuitive to navigate and that each link works and takes your visitors to the next bit of information they’re looking for.
Understand what questions they’re asking, how they’re asking, what their needs are, and what keeps them up at night. Your company is already solving their problems and fulfilling their needs or you wouldn’t be in business, right? Translate this on your website.
First step: Understand your customer and prospect needs, start a list. This is an essential step. You can’t focus on improving rankings if you don’t understand what your prospects and customers are looking for. Then, transfer this knowledge to your website. Translate the products and services that make your business a success in a clear format using the natural language understood by your industry. Become a resource for your clients and Google will reward you.
Quick trick: To find out what the most popular search terms are, type your keywords and prospect questions into Google’s search bar. Google will show you a list of related searches. Use these terms to update your copy and inform blog topics. Free and easy!
Advanced tactic: Use one of the top SEO tools to research keyword alternatives and search volume. At Stream Creative, our favorites are Moz and SEMrush, both offer free trials. Moz’s Keyword Explorer
6. Get listed!
Company listings (called citations) on local, national, and niche directory websites let Google and your prospects know where to find you. Consistent, authoritative, and up-to-date citations create more exposure for your business and improve Google rankings.
Doing business locally? SEO is critical to local business. Google serves results differently depending on your location. Getting found means mobile searchers become your buyers. To positively affect Google rankings right in your hometown, there are a number of essential steps you can take to outrank your local competitors.
Ensure your Google My Business profile is complete. Don’t just submit the minimum, take advantage of all the opportunities to promote your business through this profile. Google is looking for images, hours of operation, and more. Take the time to get this done!
Quick trick: Create a local landing page for each physical location for your organization. Remember to optimize the page with your city, state, and zip/postal code.
7. Track your progress.
Time to evaluate all your hard work. Tracking your progress will inform your SEO strategy and marketing tactics for ongoing strategy iterations. Remember to track with a purpose. Not every number matters. These metrics, or KPIs, should be based on your specific business goals.