Digital Marketing Mastery: Insights, Strategies, and Tactics for Success

Monthly Archives: October 2013

How do I know if My SEO Strategy was a Success?

Local SEO professionals
Local SEO strategy

When it comes to determining if an SEO campaign is successful it’s all about measurement. There are several metrics that can help the SEO professional know more about their strategies and how they may need to be tweaked. Page rankings, links and referrals are some of the key measurements SEO specialists may consider when determining how successful the campaign is.  Measuring an SEO campaign can take many different forms and this can become complicated since the web is in a constant state of change. In order to stay ahead in this climate and ensure that a website remains competitive it’s essential to dedicate some time to the evaluation process. But what are we supposed to look at or measure when determining if a campaign is successful or not?

Engagement

Even if an SEO campaign successfully drives traffic to a site it does not mean the campaign was a success. When traffic arrives at the site only to leave without visiting another page it counts in the metrics as a bounce. Search engines note when traffic to your site bounces out at a high rate and it can potentially lower the site’s ranking in the SERPs. It’s important to properly analyze engagement factors like bounce rate and how long visitors spend on a page. If there are some specific keywords which lead to poor engagement compared to some of the other keywords you may want to target new keywords. Use engaging content and keywords in order to improve the quality of traffic to the site through SEO campaigns. It’s essential that users be engaged.

What is On Page SEO?

SEO
Marketing

In times gone by SEO was all about working on the backend of a site and the focus was all on Meta descriptions, title tags and links. Google soon caught on to some of the unethical ways that people were manipulating search results by gaming the system and they changed up the algorithm used for determining site rankings. Google changed their focus, and so should SEO experts – at least those who want to see their sites rank high in the SERPs. Google now wants to see quality content that uses keywords which are inserted in ways that humans will understand them rather than just “stuffed” in to attract the attention of the search engine crawlers. On-page SEO is what is done to the site’s textual content that is read by humans when they read the site or blog.

How Important is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is very important as it can increase your site’s SEO efficiency. If you spend the maximum of your energy or budget on building links while ignoring on-page SEO strategies, you’ll be wasting your time. Link building is an essential part of ranking your site in the SERPs, but well designed on-page SEO can be much more beneficial. On-page SEO can be completed properly and then you really will not have to worry about it again. When it is done right, you will receive more relevant and targeted traffic. Ignoring on-page SEO strategies you’ll likely get traffic of lower quality. As long as you are using white hat SEO methods your on-site optimization is actually the safest form of SEO and it won’t get penalized by search engines. Diligent on-page SEO will be logical to both humans and search engines. Avoid penalties and increase ranking by removing duplicate content, simply web page designs and make your site easy to navigate.

What are the Elements of a Successful SEO Campaign?

Successful SEO
Successful SEO

Good Search Engine Optimization is hard time consuming work. Building a successful campaign is like building a solid structure that is going to stand the test of time. An SEO campaign is successful when it has a foundation that is solid enough to be able to endure many challenges posed by competitors and changes that occur in the search engine ranking algorithms. There are many different aspects and elements included in SEO best practices and SEO itself is constantly in a state of flux. The elements of successful SEO campaigns can be brought down to three essential parts which will work together to support each other and the entire campaign: content, links and social media.  Working with a reputable SEO firm can help ensure that you utilize the latest in SEO best practices on your site.

High Quality Content

It’s just logical that great content is an essential part of SEO strategies. Your website should act as a hub and contain good content as part of the on-site strategies. It is noteworthy to mention that the site itself must be high quality as successful SEO simply cannot exist with a poor website. Every piece of content on a site should be high quality and purposeful. For an SEO campaign to be successful there are no shortcuts. Remember that articles or blog posts are indexed by the web crawlers but should be developed for the readers not the search engines. Blogs and websites should be regularly updated with fresh, unique and valuable content. There is also some content that is seen only by browsers and crawlers – Meta content. URLs, Meta titles, Meta descriptions, and Meta keywords are all considered to be “content” and must accurately use SEO best practices.

How to Use Google+ for SEO

Google Local Pages
Google Local Page

Google+ can be a beneficial part of an SEO campaign. For those who are not yet using Google Plus, it is likely because they do not know how to take advantage of the platform or misunderstand the nature of Google+ and how it can improve SEO results. There are several different ways to strategically use Google+ for SEO purposes.

Google+ Content

Content on Google+ is treated by the search engine just like content that is on any other web page. Any content that is placed on Google+ will be indexed and can gain page rank as well as be listed in search results by Google. This can be very beneficial since about 2/3 of all searches in the United States take place on Google. It is essential to have your content searched and indexed. The posts made on Google+ will appear as search page results which manes that some of your audience may be able to find your Google+ content through a regular search on Google. The content will be online, gain in page rank, and appear in SERPs for a long period of time. It’s even possible for some of the posts to continue ranking indefinitely – even as long as a year. Most tweets only have about a 14 minute lifespan on SERPs so one year is really good real estate.

What is Google Penguin?

Keeping up with a blog or a website can keep a person very busy. Developing high quality content and following all the SEO best practices are just part of the worry that an individual has to bear, not to mention how to get it ranked high in the search engine result pages (SERP). It’s important to maintain a blog or site for an established audience; but it is equally important to get it listed in the top slots of the SERPs so that more people can find it. That’s just good business. There trouble is that just about the time it is all up and running Google releases a new update like Penguin and it’s back to the drawing board.

What is Google Penguin?

Having an online presence is essential for the successful business of today. Google Penguin is really a process used to penalize black hatters who abuse the system in order to gain the advantage and manipulate the search engines into ranking their sites higher in the SERPs. Penguin is really an attempt by Google to clean up the search algorithm and reduce spam as well as site rankings that are from “questionable” sites or irrelevant because they manipulated the system to get located in the coveted 3 slots. It really aims at penalizing those who use “black hat” SEO methods like keyword stuffing, link building schemes, spamdexing, or duplicate content as well as the multitude of techniques used by some SEO companies in order to help clients gain exposure on line.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral campaign
Go Viral Button

Just a few years ago the internet was like a one-way street where a person got online simply to get information. There was no interaction, and there was no such thing as a share or a like. But as the internet evolved into the Web 2.0 world we know today interaction became the primary element. It is now a super highway running both ways with all sorts of social interactions. This is basically what drives viral marketing. The main idea behind a viral marketing campaign is to initiate social sharing of your message for you. Some experts suggest that a viral campaign will have between 500 and a 1000 times more impact than a campaign that is not viral.

Why is it called “Viral” Marketing?

When we think of a virus, we generally think of flu season. But viral marketing is a strategy which helps pass information on from person to person simulating how a virus is passed until an enormous amount of people have been in contact with it. A viral marketing message has the potential of exponential growth in terms of how many people it is exposed to or how many individuals are influenced by the message. Just like a virus, this strategy will require taking advantage of very rapid multiplication in order for the message to explode out to thousands or millions of individuals.

How to Use YouTube for SEO

SEO Rank
SEO elements

Successful inbound marketing requires a lot of optimized content, and content is not just written words. Videos are one type of content and YouTube is certainly the most popular site for watching them. It just makes good sense to take advantage of YouTube since it is just behind Google when it comes to the sizes of search engines. But YouTube also has a huge impact across social networking sites. In just one day people watch about 500 years’ worth of videos via Facebook; and over 700 videos are shared on Twitter every minute. These large numbers simply demonstrate what an enormous reach videos have. Videos can be useful for boosting a company’s discoverability as well as help to encourage consumer engagement. This is where SEO strategies come is since it is imperative that people are able to find the videos that you put online. There are several strategies for optimizing YouTube videos for SERPs.