SEO Is Not About Keywords
Are You Following These 6 SEO Guidelines for Search Engine Optimization Success?
If you think SEO, or search engine optimization, is just a buzz word and a matter of adding keywords to your site to increase traffic, you are wrong. Search engine optimization is a big part of your overall, content-strategy program tied directly to your marketing efforts.
For example, TopRank® Online Marketing just posted the latest description about SEO:
“Optimization is about more than rankings and how content is discovered through organic search. It’s about understanding your distinct audiences and creating findable, shareable content that answers their questions in a way that builds your brand credibility and pulls prospects to purchase, customers to advocacy and the media to your brand as the best answer for your area of expertise. To optimize is a continuous process of putting forth the tactics of a plan designed to achieve a particular objective. Optimization is a cycle of continuously collecting the performance information of online marketing efforts and making adjustments to improve.”
With this in mind, are you following these 6 guidelines for successful, SEO results?
1. Do you have an overall, marketing plan in place detailing your target audience and goals?
2. Do you have an editorial calendar based on your marketing plan?
3. Do you have a detailed, SEO keyword-database based on extensive research regarding your industry, competition, location, products, services, and common-sense terms your customers are actually using to find your business online?
4. Do you have the appropriate keyword coding on your Website? You need a different title and description on each page written in a way that stresses benefits and not features.
5. Is your SEO content written with specific goals in mind and “copy that sells” while providing value?
6. Are you monitoring and testing your SEO content and making the appropriate changes?
Do you have all of these items in place? If not, you are not doing your SEO activities correctly and wasting time and money.
Sure… you can use an automated service to optimize your content and add keywords, but you will not get the best results. Today’s SEO is about providing value to your customers via good content and social media.
Instead of wasting your efforts on an “easy” service, find an experienced content strategist to help you. Not only will you see sales increase, but you’ll also boost online credibility and learn more about your customers!
For more information on content strategy, see this SEO and PR entry here, or contact me here for your free consultation.