My SEO work has really had a chance to shine in the last decade. Yeah, decade now. While most of my competitors were in grade school I already had a decade or more in the industry. I’ve been doing this a long time and have made a lot of people a lot of money. From getting sites unsuspended from Google to dominating the front page with six (6) returns on the front page of Google for primary keywords. Yes, six. How would you like to own six out of the nine spots available on the front page for your most important product?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization for your website is really implemented over your entire web presence, when done correctly. By now most business owners have at least heard of SEO and most people in IT related fields have a decent understanding. If you’re new, at its most basic it is writing the words, or copy, on the website so that search engines like it. If they like it, then they will rank you higher. As people visit your site if they spend some time there and even visit other pages they will keep ranking you higher. The goal is to become the number one organic return on Google.
Let's be clear, anyone guaranteeing that they can get you to the #1 spot on Google is taking your money. Google is a third party company that closely guards the release of their information. I’d be skeptical of that because Google doesn’t just hire a bunch of idiots. They hire the best in the industry and everyone and their brother is going to get you to the front page? Really?
When doing SEO most think of the copy on the website, or the words written. This is part of it but SEO done properly has to be tied into the entire digital marketing campaign. Not only does the copy need to meet many factors but the images need to be properly named, the meta data properly included and the schema markup properly implements. This is known as On-Site SEO. But there is also Off-Site SEO.
Off-Site is carrying these same principals over to the other marketing relating to your products or services. Like your advertising banners and ads, social media and any other places you have content related to you and your business. It needs to be optimized to match everything. This is one of the factors to a good ranking.
While other SEO professionals are trying to get one page of a site to the #1 spot, what about those other either spots on the front page of Google? What if you could not only have the #1 Spot on Google but #3, #4, #6, #7 and #9? I’ve achieved that for a primary keyword employing a simple strategy I’ve learned over the years.
The secret to high ranking is there is no secret. Google tells you exactly what will raise your rankings. You must follow their advice and you will rise. What is their advice? Good, quality content with good, solid, sound SEO practices.
Way too often I’ve seen “SEO Companies” provide content for a company like what they wrote was the Holy Grail of content for your page. How do you know if the content you have on your website is the most effective? There is no way anyone can know for sure. As SEO professional’s our job is to quickly become quasi experts in your industry. We write to the best of our ability but no one knows for sure if you’ve done the absolute best. So, you test it that’s how.
In marketing there is what is called A/B Testing where a set percentage of people coming to your site will see one version, while the rest sees a different one. It can be as simple as the color of a button or as dynamic as a video background versus a static image.
During this testing there are tools to be employed that allow you to see exactly what a visitor does on your website.
Setting all this up and testing it takes a lot of man hours. But it is how you hone your marketing to maximize every encounter with a prospective client.