You Need a Modern SEO Strategy. Here's How to Shape One.

You probably know that search engine optimization (or SEO) can help more people find your company's website when they search for businesses like yours online. But when’s the last time you ensured your SEO strategy is following best practices -- and getting the results your business really needs?

Here’s why you need a modern SEO strategy, along with tips on how to build a program that helps you gain tangible results (customers) not just a high ranking, from organic search.

You can use SEO to drive traffic to your business website. But if your visitors can’t find your site or contact you, then you haven’t added much value to your business. First make sure that your website is optimized to convince interested visitors to contact you. That means you need an updated, responsive website design.

If your site isn’t built for today’s best practices, it may not even show up in search results. And outdated sites that don’t provide a great user experience raise a red flag to potential customers. This is amplified if your business doesn’t have a mobile site now that Google warns users when a site is not optimized for mobile viewing. And with scores of consumers searching for local information via mobile, having a mobile site is simply not optional any longer.

The next step is to drive more conversions of site visitors to customers. A great, mobile-optimized design will help with that, but your site also needs to feature multiple contact methods like a phone number, email address, web form and chat so that visitors can reach out to you when they are ready -- and through the method they prefer.

When you have this trifecta of a modern, mobile, and conversion-optimized website, you’re on your way to converting more of the website traffic you get from SEO.

Creating content for search engine optimization.

Search engines love content that’s recent, relevant and authoritative. One of the most challenging aspects of modern SEO is creating content that’s relevant to your business.

Both foundational website content and fresh, timely content (like blog posts) focused around the main topics and keywords of your business can help searchers find your website. To create compelling, search-friendly content, start off with a topic or keyword list that’s relevant to your business, products or services and target location.

Then create relevant, ongoing content about those topics to so that search engines will continually index your site in the search results. The most effective way to do this is to set up a blog and regularly post unique, informative posts that your audience will enjoy.

But, customer-facing content isn’t the only material to focus on. Populate your pages’ metadata fields with important keywords and accurate descriptions of its content. In addition, including on your site semantic markup code (like that found at Schema.org) will emphasize specific information about your business, like the name, business type and location. These back-end tactics can improve how quickly and easily search engines can match your site to specific, localized searches, helping it show up in organic search results.

Using social media and local sites to drive traffic.

Modern SEO doesn’t end with attending to your website. You also need to develop your offsite presence on social media sites, local listings and directories that can help amplify your site's SEO. A presence on social media sites and local directories increases the amount of information that consumers can find about your business when they search.

That’s because social signals and properly configured listings (or “citations”) might influence how search engines surface your website in organic results. Making sure these pages are active and optimized for search can also help them appear in organic-search results for your company's branded or key terms.

Set up your company's profiles on top social media sites (like Facebook, Twitter and Google+) and within important local listings (like those appearing on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp and CitySearch), populate them with optimized, accurate content and link them back to your business website.

Not only are these third-party sites a key destination for local searchers, but these sources can also signal to search engines that your business website is authoritative and relevant, helping boost its visibility in the search results.

Getting a return on the investment.

Here’s your final test for a truly modern approach to SEO: Once you’re getting site visitors, converting them into customers is the next step involved with gaining a return on the SEO investment. This first means responding to and following up with your site's visitors regularly (via phone and or email) so that they actually become customers.

But also track them back to the marketing source and figure out whether they came to the site from your SEO efforts so you can know if your marketing is working. This can be done through a manual or automated process, but it does require ongoing measurement and monitoring so you can see trends, view results and make adjustments to your program.

Five Ways To Boost Your SEO Strategy

A new startup is born every day.

In garages, dorm rooms, and basements all around the world, people are bringing their business ideas to life. But this surge of entrepreneurial energy isn’t limited to actual startups. Big brands like Coca-Cola and Red Bull are adopting lean and agile methods to mimic the flexibility and rapid innovation of Silicon Valley’s hottest up-and-comers.

While it may not be practical to adjust every aspect of your company to be more like a startup, adjusting your SEO strategy at the enterprise level to mirror a startup’s methods can help you stay ahead of the game.

Here are a few SEO tips ripped right from the entrepreneur playbook:

1. Remove Bureaucracy

When you have to submit a request and go through multiple layers of approval to make even the smallest change, it squelches productivity. SEO is no different.

Your SEO team should constantly be adding and altering keywords and phrases. If every change has to be approved by the legal team and the board of directors, it destroys efficiency.

Cut the red tape, and place your trust in your SEO team. Make sure they can easily access web files, CSS, and other privileged information.

2. Stop Keyword Stuffing

SEO operates in a pyramid structure, where main terms are targeted on the home page, ancillary terms are placed on secondary pages, and so forth.

For example, if you have 1,500 terms you want to target about smoke detectors, your home page will target “smoke detectors,” and your internal pages will target long-tail keywords.

However, big companies often try to bypass this process by placing all their keywords on the home page. This method can produce quick results, but Google will ultimately penalize them for bad SEO practices. This year, we saw quite a few big brands — including eBay — tumble down search results for trying to game the system.

Cramming in low-quality links with too many anchor texts will yield feeble SEO results. Instead, hire a qualified PR professional to get you on reputable sites like CNN. The organic, healthy links will filter in naturally and boost your SEO without keyword stuffing.

3. Be Relentless About Creating a Great User Experience

Ultimately, startups succeed due to their commitment to producing the best possible user experience. Big brands can harness this mentality simply by striving to build a better site than their competitors. By producing superior content and increasing your website’s load speed, you nurture a positive brand image.

The Internet marketing blog ShoeMoneyonce described this idea as the “screw Google” mentality, which suggests that you manage your website as if Google doesn’t exist. This will keep you focused solely on building a great website that customers will return to again and again.

4. Embrace Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have a larger impact on SEO than you think, and startups know this. The most successful ones know that creating a community around branded content begins a cycle that ultimately elevates a site’s SEO.

When you create attention-grabbing posts and your followers click through, Google notices your site’s traffic spike, and you boost brand awareness.

It may not be a traditional SEO move, but it’s a great one for your site.

5. Don’t Take Shortcuts

Every entrepreneur knows there’s no substitute for hard work and dedication, and that includes a sound SEO strategy.

Back in 2007, SEO “specialists” advised their clients to set SEO bait, which tricked viewers into organically linking to a site. On Myspace, users often took quizzes that produced results in easy-to-copy banner ads. When they embedded them on their Myspace profile, it artificially inflated that site’s visibility. Google eventually caught on, and sites were penalized.

There aren’t any shortcuts to good SEO. It all comes down to great content, an engaged audience, and a solid SEO team that gets your customers the information they’re looking for every time.

While the Internet landscape is constantly evolving, SEO has remained a valuable marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. If there’s one method your company can steal from startups, it’s this: Get to work.

How to Ensure Your SEO Strategy Delivers the Right Traffic

When it comes to SEO, achieving first page rankings and getting more traffic is one thing, but what about ensuring those rankings deliver the right type of traffic to your website, traffic that will actually convert into new customers?

Here are three steps to ensure that your SEO campaign delivers the right traffic to your website.

Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience

You know your customers. So, identifying your target audience should be the easy part, but when it comes to SEO, this isn't always the case. If you offer different service or product lines, your target audience may comprise of a number of different segments. This makes identifying your target audience for SEO purposes much more difficult.

If you attempt to go after every possible customer in one fail swoop, your SEO strategy will most likely fail. Instead, methodically carve away the different segments, and target them incrementally. When you achieve success with one segment, then move onto the next. This is necessary because depending on the type of business you're in, each segment may have very different needs and wants.

How do you identify which segment to target first? It's a good idea to start with your most profitable and least competitive segment, so you can quickly start generating a return on your investment.

Step 2: Select the Right Keywords

Once you've identified which segment you want to target, the next step is selecting the keywords those prospective customers will use when searching for your product or service.

When selecting keywords, don't just look for the ones that deliver the highest search volume. Put yourself in your customers' shoes, and look for keywords that make sense from their perspective. There is a lot of "advice" out there about choosing keywords that have an ideal combination of search volume and competition. However, all of that is irrelevant if you fail to choose keywords that prospective customers will actually use when searching for your products or services.

In addition to choosing relevant keywords, take the purchase intent of those keywords into account. You can have two very similar keywords that indicate very different intentions by the searcher. Keywords with high purchase intent are more likely to convert than keywords with low purchase intent, and are typically long-tail keywords, with lower search volume, and less competition.

Example

For example, let's say a contractor that specializes in kitchen remodels is considering the following keywords, "kitchen remodel" and "kitchen remodeling contractor." The keyword, "kitchen remodel" is much more attractive initially because the data shows that it receives significantly more search volume than "kitchen remodeling contractor."

However, there are two reasons why "kitchen remodeling contractor" is the better choice. First, it has far less competition, and the contractor actually has a shot at achieving first page rankings. Second, someone searching for "kitchen remodel" could be looking for a number of things, not necessarily a kitchen remodeling service. They could be looking for pictures as inspiration for a future potential remodel, or a how-to because they intend to attempt a remodel themselves.

While it is possible that someone using the "kitchen remodel" search term could become a customer in the future, someone searching for a "kitchen remodeling contractor" is likely ready to execute their remodel, and is simply looking for the right contractor.

Step 3: Provide Content Your Customers Care About

The next step to ensuring the right visitors find your website is by providing them with content they find relevant and useful. Your website's content should be able to answer your customers' questions. So, think about what your customers typically want to know prior to doing business with you, and make sure your content answers those questions.

Here are a few examples of how this can be achieved:

Are you selling a service that requires a high level of expertise? Publish posts to your website's blog regularly to show that you're an expert in your field.

Do your customers typically want to see examples of past work? Provide a project gallery to showcase your previous projects, and supplement it with testimonials to reinforce trust and credibility.

Do you sell a product that your customers typically like to compare against other products? Provide a product comparison review that shows why your product is the better choice.

By providing content that your customers care about, you're not only satisfying their needs by answering their questions, but you're also giving them an avenue to find your website.

Conclusion

To ensure that your SEO strategy delivers the right traffic to your website, identify your target audience, select high purchase intent keywords your prospective customers will actually use, and provide them with relevant and useful content that answers their questions.