What is search optimization and why do I care?
Definition: the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
Search engine optimization has been often described as the “long-game” and SEO focused agencies are finding it to be more difficult to show value in saturated markets where the keywords are quite competitive.
Now, that is not to say that you should just give up and forget about SEO – we believe that content that lives and breathes on your site can be created by the best people for the job – your in-house team.
Blogging is not rocket science – there is not a complex art to it – however, SEO can get quite technical and you need an agency partner to consult your team on a few things. Let’s break down the different tactics within SEO.
SEO Tactics
*the order below does not denote. prioritization. Every site will be a different roll-out plan.
When attempting to reach that sweet spot we breakdown the tactical into three categories.
1) Content + Design
For a long time, text optimization was conducted on the basis of keyword density. This approach has now been superseded, firstly by weighting terms using WDF*IDF tools and – at the next level – by applying topic cluster analyses to proof terms and relevant terms. The aim of text optimization should always be to create a text that is not only built around one keyword, but that covers term combinations and entire keyword clouds in the best way possible. This is how to ensure that the content describes a topic in the most accurate and holistic way it can. Today, it is no longer enough to optimize texts solely to meet the needs of search engines. {source: search metrics}
- Keyword strategy
- Blogging – more on this strategy to come but it’s not just about slapping. 800 words on your site anymore
- Headers, title tags, meta – remember to organize content for the user, sometimes bullets are better or perhaps you can swap a complex thought into a visual
- Images – compressed files for faster load times and add alt text and descriptions
- Optimized for mobile
- Optimized for CRO – conversion rate optimization – with the strategic implementation of “calls-to-action”
2) Technical Optimization
- Specify a Preferred Domain
- Optimize Robots.txt
- Optimize Your URL Structure
- Navigation and Site Structure
- Breadcrumb Menus
- Implement Structured Data Markup
- Canonical URLs
- Optimize 404 Page
- XML Sitemap Optimization
- SSL and HTTPS
- Website Speed
- Mobile Friendliness
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Pagination and Multilingual Websites
- Register your site with webmaster tools
3) Internal Links + Structure
- Internal linking – having a focused strategy on anchor text is key
- Canonicalization – check out Moz’s article to learn more.
- URL structure
- Logical structure and crawl depth
- Every page has meaning and focus
Remember to create a benchmark!
Your agency partner can hook you up with some great tools for your website – we love Rank Math – if you are on WordPress and ensure your ranking within specified keywords are being reported.
