Saforian’s SEO Tips
SEO, SEO, SEO, it’s a term that’s spoken often at Saforian and tends to come up in most our conversations… sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly. It can be the elephant in the room or the whisper outside the door. How does SEO fit into this campaign, that online strategy, or this clients budget. The questions seemingly go on and on. It can be overwhelming at times, but when used with the right strategic plan it can be a real game changer. Take a second and go to Google. Then search for Custom Skis. You’ll find our friend and client Wagner Skis is at the top of the search every time. This doesn’t happen by luck; it’s from having a plan, sticking with it, watching it and adjusting when necessary. Most SEO work can be done internally…it just takes persistence and some insight.
Here are a few tips that helped Wagner Skis get to the top in the Google world:
- Keyword Research: Identify keywords and phrases that your target audiences would use in searching for you. This can be done by analyzing your current referral statistics, talking to staff, interviewing customers and using other online tools. Once your site is launched, those keywords should be monitored and evaluated regularly and adjusted based on performance. If you find that certain words and phrases aren’t working, swap them out with others that are. There are a number of online resources and outside vendors available to track keywords, and provide analysis and reporting.
- Keyword Placement: Sprinkle those keywords and phrases generously throughout your site – especially on the homepage. Terms should be used in a relevant and visible way. Avoid making keywords invisible or using other “black-hat” tactics; this will result in your site getting blocked by major search engines. It’s a good idea to develop landing pages for specific phrases, particularly if you want to start purchasing ads and monitoring specific campaigns. Content should also be updated regularly so search engines, and your visitors, have something new to look for.
- Page Coding: Pages should be coded using clean, accessible, semantic web standards. This will result in a reduction of the overall size of your page, allowing more of the page to be indexed. Proper semantics (structure) notifies the search engines on the keyword priorities and word grouping preferences i.e., page title, headings and lists. Other minor, but helpful, resources like setting up robots.txt and adding a Google site map can aide search engines in finding all of your pages.
- Linking: The only way to really increase your ranking is to have other reputable sites link to you. Think beyond your website. Of course you want to have links to the new site from other sites, but sharing that link on blogs, forums, social media outlets, news sites, customer sites, etc. will have a great impact. For example, you can create partnerships with customers or clients to develop joint announcements about your work together and provide reciprocal links – a win-win for both organizations. That’s just one of many ways to improve your site’s popularity and make your ranking go up.
- Content is King: While there are many good SEO consulting firms out there, be very careful of the ones that promote their own in-house software or “guarantee” top rankings. Unless they use “black-hat” methods (which could get your site blocked), there is no such thing as a guarantee of appearance in top results. The real rule to SEO is that good, free, original content will help you gain an audience. The internet can spur brief – yet viral – popularity, which will help you achieve overall higher search engine rankings.