Win the Online War with SEO

For any interactive agency in the world, it is a grave disservice to build a website for a client that is invisible to search engines and ultimately potential customers. Great content, design and usability are simply not enough anymore in this ultra-competitive online landscape.

According to BtoB Magazine, 80% of all web traffic now begins with a search engine. If your website appears on the second or even third page in that search, you can increase your site’s traffic volume by up to nine times. A first page appearance (ranking) can mean an additional six-fold increase in traffic.

Want people spending their time and money on your brand and your brand’s website? You need Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is both an art and a science. At its core, SEO is centered on increasing your website’s relevance and visibility to your target audience. It’s done by editing and organizing the content on your website to feature the specific keywords your target audience is using as they search for your products or services. The result is that every section of your site is designed to widen the site’s footprint, make it more visible to Google and other search engines, and get it found by the people you want to find it.

Every search engine evaluates a website on a number of factors to determine its ranking. In order to successfully rank a website high on the list, you must increase relevance to users and search engines alike by optimizing three key components:

    1. Code
    2. Content
    3. Inbound Links

Try this quick test to witness SEO’s power

Step 1: Open Google.

Step 2: Search for the terms and phrases you’d like customers to be using to find your company online. Imagine the customers are brand-neutral, looking for the products or services you offer without using your specific company name.  

Step 3: Scan the search results to determine where your company ranks in the list for each search.

Step 4: Now, imagine you really are that customer searching online for these products or services. Which sites give you the impression of being the category leader? Which sites in the list are you going to click on? Which sites are going to get your time and, most likely, your money? Is your site even a contender?

How is SEO done?

1. Optimizing Code

In order to be search engine friendly, the source code of your website needs to be clean and streamlined while adhering to industry best practices. Sites should be built for search from the ground up, ensuring that the code of your website is optimized for proper search engine indexation. Existing website code can also be optimized for real results.

Why is proper indexation important? When a search engine finds (or spiders) a webpage, it reads the source code and records the content of the page, placing that data into an index (or databse). Search results are then pulled and returned from this database when performed. If your content or code is written incorrectly, your site is not being properly recognized by search engines and will not come up in searches the way you’d like it to. In turn, you’re missing out on valuable traffic and leads.

2. Optimizing Content

Next is content optimization. In partnership with your interactive agency, you should explore and discover your customers’ needs and motivations – determining what drives people to your site and what motivates them to connect with your brand when they arrive.

Then, your interactive agency should develop and bolster your website content according to what is learned, so it resonates with both search engines and users. By increasing keyword density and optimizing your site’s content for search engines, you can position your company and brand as a leader in your space while driving targeted traffic to your site, increasing your rankings and significantly impacting your bottom line.

3. Optimizing Inbound Links

The third component of a successful SEO campaign is link building. Search engines view a link to your site as a digital vote, vouching for your content. The more other sites link to your site (called inbound links), the more reputable and trustworthy it appears to search engines.

To build these valuable links, your interactive agency should employ social media marketing strategies to communicate to your target market – sharing your unique brand attributes with people across the web, inciting dialogue and driving customers to your site. These tactics may include posting on relevant blogs and community sites, using online PR and article distribution on authority/news sites, and connecting through content with tools like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others.

How to track and ensure SEO success

Your SEO campaign and your objectives are as unique as your company and your brand. That’s why a great interactive firm will focus on web analytics to guide strategy and track user behavior – relying on data, not assumption, your site is being ranked for the most visible and powerful keywords that lead searchers to click and take action. This equates to higher ROI and meaningful metrics that allow you to make educated decisions about the future.

Web analytics allow you and your interactive agency to learn:

• How many visitors are coming to your website and where they’re coming from
• What keywords searchers are using to arrive at your site through Google, Yahoo and MSN
    • Where in the world visitors are coming from
    • Which topics, pages and content are the most popular
    • What paths users follow to navigate your site
    • How long users are interacting with what content
    • At what point users are leaving your site and why
    • How many returning visitors are interacting with your website
    • What sites are linking to yours

Web analytics enable you and your interactive agency to:
    
• Track improvements in your site’s search engine ranking
• Find out where visitors are learning about your site and your brand and populate those areas with content
• Judge the effectiveness and usefulness of social media and online PR and adjust our strategy accordingly
    • Refine and perfect the SEO strategy based on analyzing keywords
    • Target specific local markets and geographic areas
    • Attract specific audiences and user segments
    • Reach new customers in new markets
• Craft and position content to drive users through specific navigation paths and sales funnels
• Understand how users perceive your brand, both online and off and affect positive change if necessary

Results, proven and guaranteed

Ascend the organic rankings. Be more visible to more customers. Increase brand recognition, brand affinity and brand relationships. Boost sales.

SEO. It’s impossible to ignore. Drop me a line to learn more about it nyorchak@leereedy.com.