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5 Common SEO Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making

Successful website auditor Alan Schill recently wrote on areas of SEO that he’s noticed the majority of website owners neglecting to their own detriment. These are low-hanging fruits that you may even be ignoring as you strategize ways to optimize your site for the search engines. Take a look.

1. How heavily do you pepper your content with keywords?

Keyword stuffing is an archaic SEO trick that people still fall back on out of habit. It’s only a matter of time before Google penalizes these sites for being spammy. Google’s goal will forever be to favor high-quality websites over the ones that try to take the back door to the top of the rankings. If your website is about lawn care and you strive to populate your blog with lawn care related how-tos as well as stay on topic in all your other web copy, your keywords will appear naturally throughout your text. The result will be a website that looks natural to Google while relevant and informative to your guests.

2. Are your blog images at the top of your posts?

Because people like visual aids, blogs do better when there are images attached to them. And they do even better when those images are at the top of the post, not sprinkled around in the middle. Don’t neglect this simple technique to draw the eyes of your visitors to your posts.

3. Who’s Your Audience—Google or Your Web Visitor?

This one ties in perfectly with question #1. Think about it: why would an SEO professional write content for the search engine instead of the visitor? To game the search engines and get to the top of the rankings, of course. Why would they want to do that? Well, to make a pay check, because unless that SEO has stock in the company they’re SEOing for, they may not care what happens after the target audience clicks on the link. This should bother you. This should bother you a lot.

Remember, Google doesn’t like to be played and every algorithm change is designed to make it more and more difficult to play them. Your objective should be to educate your target audience and offer them valuable content and products. Do this, write for them, and you will begin to see conversions in the areas that matter—sales.

4. Are you linking to websites that Google likes?

If you’re making an effort to create a high quality site, don’t waste your outbound links on sites that Google would view as spammy or low quality. Your site is better than that and you don’t want to be tainted by association. It’s considered good practice to link out to at least one respected website per piece of content on your site. Links to sources count.

5. Are you interlinking between blog posts?

If you’re writing content relevant to your industry and target audience, your blog topics are going to relate and you will have plenty of opportunities to interlink between them. This gives an SEO boost to newly created pages, lowers bounce rates by keeping your readers exploring between pages, and increases the chances that those visitors will convert.If you haven’t done this, it’s not too late to go back to your old posts and find which ones flow naturally into each other.

What now?

How many of these errors sound familiar? Hopefully we’ve given you a good start on critically analyzing your current SEO methods and beginning the process of improvement. Good luck!

Source
Schill, Alan. “SEO 101: 18 Search Rankings & Engagement Factors You Can’t Ignore.”http://www.searchenginejournal.com/18-search-rankings-engagement-factors-you-cant-ignore/119638/. November 21, 2014.

3 SEO Truths All SEO Managers Should Remember

SEO managers know that you can never get too comfortable. They’re a jumpy sort, hanging on Google’s every word and continuously adapting to ever-updating algorithm changes. It’s a lot of pressure, but in the midst of all the uncertainty, there are three universal truths that every SEO should remember as they continue plowing toward that number one spot in the rankings.

First, Mismanaged Expectations Will Ruin You
The first priority of any decent SEO professional should be to educate their client. There are so many definitions of SEO out there that depending on which one your client subscribes to, they’re either going to be thrilled with your services or deeply dissatisfied—and with the same results!

For example, a client may see increased organic traffic and subsequent leads, but they’re still upset because they expected more based on the amount of money they put into you. In this scenario, you may have succeeded by your estimation, but in the client’s eyes, you failed based on the expectations you failed to clarify. And if the client thinks you failed, you failed.

So how is this frustrating and potentially costly scenario avoided?

  1. Make sure you evaluate the data closely and set realistic numerical goals. If your client doesn’t have past data to scrutinize, draw on your experience with customers that have a similar profile. This will provide a baseline for your customer to latch onto, which they certainly will do. Remember that they will latch onto whatever estimated number you give them.
  2. Prepare education material for your customer at every level of the SEO process.
  3. Determine what’s most important to the client and report on that, and when you provide them with data, it’s absolutely critical that they understand what they’re looking at. That will depend on how well you’ve educated them.

Second, Resource Constraints are the Bane of an SEO’s Existence
Resource constraints can ruin an SEO endeavor, especially as you consider how many different departments factor into completing SEO initiatives: web dev, content, lead gen, social media, and more. If your budgets are limited in any of these, SEO-targeted projects can be road-blocked at multiple stages.

Techniques to avoid resource-related roadblocks:

  1. Inform yourself of the possible resource constraints ahead of time. Become familiar with the liberties and restrictions your client will have on those necessary departments, and how much access you will have to them too.
  2. You’re also going to have to make a list of priorities to follow to the letter. You and your client are a part of the creation of this list, discussing budget in relation to their needs and goals will help you determine which item should take priority over the rest and which should be put on hold until resources allow.
  3. Depending on your own resources, you may have some of the manpower to take much of the delegation aspect of SEO off of your client’s shoulders. In fact, that may be why they chose you as their SEO solution.

Third, Not Being Prepared for the Unexpected Will Hurt—A Lot

This just has to do with personnel changes, which happens frequently in our industry. When you lose clients for any number of reasons, here’s what you can do to salvage benefits from those relationships:

  1. End on the best note possible. Provide the info they need to transition to their new arrangement and request referrals if possible.
  2. Stay in touch too. In this highly connected world, there’s no reason not to stay connected over social networks.
  3. It will be hard not to take it personally when a client departs, but don’t. Learn what you can from the relationship and use what you’ve learned to perfect the next to come.

What have been the biggest roadblocks or lessons that you faced and learned as an SEO manager?

Source

Gillette, Casie. “3 Common Challenges Facing All SEO Managers.” http://searchengineland.com/3-common-challenges-facing-seo-managers-209308?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6TOZKXonjHpfsX97uwrXaS%2FlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ATcdkM6%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7fHK816y9AQWxXm. (November 26, 2014.)