The difference between zero and hero online can boil down to if your website is optimized properly for the terms most searched in your industry. With 70 % of the spoils going to the #1 position in the top 10 for any given keyword, stating that “rank matters” is truly an understatement.
With the competition getting more fierce by the day, search engines have become the battleground for various rubber matches between companies seeking to lay claim to the coveted top 10 results. One position with the right message in the title with a concise description can go a long way in determining if your site ranks or tanks online.
So, say for example you finally decide to have SEO (search engine optimization ) performed on your website. How do you get started? Ironically enough, you don’t break out the yellow pages, nine out of 10 people use a search engine to find anything and everything, whether it’s an SEO company, the latest deals on shoes, what movies are playing, etc.. It just goes to show that this conditioning is what makes optimizing your content essential for those seeking your services.
So, you go to a search engine, input a query like “seo web design, website placement company, search engine optimization company” or any number of thousands of potential word combinations, then based on the ranking/relevance and the brief description, you decide to click on the link and investigate/validate the company or their offer.
This happens minute after minute, day after day month after month for millions of keywords across the globe. Which is why it is important to think the same way a customer might when seeking products and services in your industry.
One tip is, if you are thinking about optimizing your website, try to think like a customer on one hand and like a software engineer on another. Since engineers are the ones who control how search engines see your site and customers are the ones who determine how the engineers create the programs that administer the search engines. The bottom line is, it’s all about relevance and results. So having terms in your site like ” how do I sell a home” optimized for real estate, or “I want the best deal on flights to Miami” if you are a travel company can go along way. Not to mention strengthening the natural affinity of key phrases for your industry.
So, when asked what is the best way to optimize our content (from clients), I will often explain that in order to rank for something, it needs to be on your pages (in one way, shape or form preferably exact match). The more skillful you are at crafting pages to maintain their consistency for the human reader with marketing copy that has a message, hits the mark, yet still has enough validity to search engine spiders is the key.
This involves thoughtful planning in the construction of a new web page or after the fact Seo copy writing to mend the holes in the net if the keywords you want to rank for are missing in action from your pages. Another consideration is, it is possible to minimize changes to the body copy of the web page and still make substantial changes to the title, description and meta tags, perform some link building and still rank through the roof, it is really a matter of analyzing each industry, it’s requirements and the competition to determine which optimization strategies are required to crack the barrier to entry for those keywords.
Content is the basis of rankings, but it needs to be organized which is where the SEO consultant or optimization expert comes in. Their job is to match your pages with people looking for them and oftentimes that involves change. So if you want to rank for everything under the sun, chances are your pages need to change and a more realistic grasp of how optimization works is in order.
If you expect an SEO company to work miracles and miraculously position your pages without laying a finger on the content itself, sure there are a few companies that could pull that off, but more than likely they are using some black hat unethical technique that could get you banned (like a pharmaceutical company trying to show up for searches under Disney Land for example).
It’s better to be safe than sorry, so stick with an ethical search engine optimization company with firm credentials who should be able to :
a) assess your rankings strengths and flaws
b) develop a content management plan (devise integration of new content)
c) identify the most searched terms in your industry, their competitiveness so they can clearly identify a time-line for to achieve the objective.
Sometimes all the SEO in the world, just needs a chance to settle in, particularly if the website is going from unknown to top 10 in an industry the site has a history in. Just as search engines have a memory, sometimes they have to get all of the old pages out, before the new changes are indexed, and this takes time. Which is why we like to mix add fresh content as well as optimize the older antiquated pages. But in most cases you should see changes within weeks for new changes on a site, if the SEO company is also link building in addition to the on page optimization.
I hope this provides so more insight to what a client needs to know about SEO. The main message is that embracing change, deciding to pony up the amount for a real Seo professional can mean the difference between packing up shop from lack of sales, or buying a new building to accommodate your new sales team to manage the record sales you are receiving from your website.
Good article, thanks!
We need to look at the page and as a user and optimizer, then everything will turn out