10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

ABOUT SEO

By Chris J. Everett, Principal & Founder Captivate Search Marketing

Is your business behind the times when it comes to adapting to marketing online? You may know it’s important to get found online but have no clue how to get there.

If you have only heard of “search engine optimization” and you think it’s black magic that gets you to the top of the search results, there is a lot more you need to know.

SEO is a myriad of strategies, both on-site and off of your website that work to build your website’s (and your brand’s) online reputation in order to drive you toward the top of the search results.

If you’re an SEO novice, we have broken down 10 essential things you need to know about search engine optimization strategies.

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT SEO: ON-SITE CONSIDERATIONS

This obviously starts with solid keyword research on your company’s products or services.

Then each core page on your site should fully keyword optimize the following elements to ensure optimal SEO friendliness

• meta tags• URLs• on-page content• header tags

1. Each Core Page Should be Fully Keyword Optimized

It is vitally important that the content on your website be valuable for users and completely original. Scraping other websites for content and just plain copying won’t get you ranked – and in some cases it can get you penalized by the search engines. Don’t be a fool. Be original.

2. Duplicate Content is a Death Sentence

3. Don’t Ignore Your Company Blog

So often when you land on a company website that has a blog, you might notice it hasn’t been updated in months. What should you do?

Blog your heart out about anything relevant and interesting and/or helpful to consumers. Blog about your products or services. Blog about your brand.

And make sure you’re linking to related content both on your website and to other trusted sources throughout the web.

Merely getting people to your website isn’t the end goal. Getting those users to convert IS the end goal.

No matter if you’re trying to convert a sale, signup, or contact form, you need to make sure your website is primed for conversions with easy to navigate pages, strong calls to action, and a super easy way to contact you – on every page.

4. Know that SEO isn’t Just About No. 1 Rankings:

5. Create an on-site HTML based Sitemap Your Sitemap is a blueprint of your website’s architecture.

It lists each page on your website and can not only aid visitors with a more user friendly experience, but also makes it easier for the search engine bots to crawl and index your website.

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT SEO: OFF-SITE CONSIDERATIONS

One of the critical keys to building rankings is establishing a content marketing strategy that produces valuable content that gets in front of searchers and builds relevant back links.

6. Establish Several Off-site Blogs for Your Business

Blogging is absolutely essential for this, so you’ll want to widen the reach of your brand by building more than one off-site blog.

7. Guest Blog Righteously

Guest blogging, offering free content on other websites in exchange for a link, is a very popular means of building back links for your website.

But you must be cognizant of how you go about your guest blogging practice. Be sure you seek out high quality websites that don’t appear spammy, and are also topically relevant to your own website’s content.

One of the keys to effective content marketing is diversification of the content that you’re producing.

Video marketing is a highly interactive and effective channel for reaching consumers. Videos can also be search engine optimized themselves, allowing for further exposure for your brand in the search results.

Another great thing about video is that not everyone does it, so you should!

8. Don’t Turn a Blind Eye to Video Marketing

Because it does. Social Media is a critical aspect of off-site SEO. People are now flocking to social networking sites, and you need to make sure your business does too.

Create a Facebook profile; a YouTube account; get on Foursquare, Google+, Twitter. Engage your customers. Share your content and reap the rewards of inbound traffic from your social media presence.

9. Socialize Like Your Business Depends on It:

While establishing this is a combination of on-site and off-site, integrating the code snippet that ties your website to your personal (or your Business Owners’) Google+ page leads to a variety of benefits, one of which is having your headshot in the search results, which studies have shown to entice much higher click through rates from the search engine results page.

10. Integrate Your Google+ Authorship Rich Snippet

Now that you’ve heard the basics of on-site and off-site things you need to know about SEO, do you think you have a better understanding of search engine optimization and what strategies your company needs to enact in order to achieve its goals?

We’d love to hear from you. Leave your comments.