SEO « Kristeen Bullwinkle

How to evaluate a newly added webpage

You’ve sweated out the words, located or created great visuals, and the new page has been posted. Was it worth the effort? Here a few ways to measure your results.

Why did you create the page?

First we need to look at why you created a new page. To capture new organic search traffic? Introduce a new product line? Answer a question your customer service people are getting sick of hearing? Provide more information to someone earlier or later into the buying cycle? Encourage other sites to link to your page?

Landing page

Let’s assume you wrote a new landing page. This is a page you can expect visitors to land upon from an organic search, a link in an email campaign, a social media link, or an ad. Success could be measured in any of these ways:

Number of conversions (sales, signups, contributions, etc.) made by visitors to that page. All good analytics programs will show this, although you have to tell it what you mean by a conversion.
Bounce rate for page. If this number is higher than for other landing pages, investigate the reason. Did the page match the promise of the ad? Are the keywords leading to the page appropriate to the searcher’s context? Are the links I have on the page engaging enough to lead the reader further into the site?
(My personal blog gets traffic for the word caruncle which I use in reference to the rooster’s comb, but I know that visitors could be coming to learn about urethral caruncles, the red portion of the corner of the eye, or even the fleshy structure attached to the seed. I expect a high bounce rate for organic search referrals to that page.)
Number of new or returning visitors to the page. If you’ve written a page to pull in new traffic and to reach people early in the buying cycle or education phase, then you want high numbers of new visitors. If you created a page directed at current customers/clients/readers, or to people later in the buying cycle, then you want to see a higher number of returning visitors viewing the page.
Search engine optimization. Let’s look at a few analytics reports. These are all from Google Analytics. Google Analtyics has two reports you want to look at to see if you are successfully making it to the first page of search results and if your landing page is attracting hits. (Remember that your search ranking is also influence by the searcher’s geography, past history, and social network.)
Let’s look first at the Queries report where we’ll see if your site is doing well for various keywords. This report will be most helpful if your new page introduces a new keyword to your site.

This site isn’t showing up well for the keywords “cowboy boots,” but is doing better for “black and white cowboy boots.” This is a longer tail keyword which tend to perform better since they have less competition. Even though its average position is 15, it isn’t attracting any visitors. The click-through rate (CTR) is zero. That probably means that the page title and meta description for the landing page should be rewritten in an attempt to get those searchers to click on my site’s search result listing.

In the landing page report we see that the page is doing a little better than we would have assumed by just looking at the query report. It is getting some traffic. It’s showing up deep within Google search results with an average position of 180. More investigation will show that the page is getting traffic from other long tail keywords like “girls in cowboy boots and shorts.” To attract more traffic I’d want to introduce or repeat those keywords into the page title, headings, image descriptions, and the general text. But only it they were relevant to my goals for the page.

A better custom report can be created like this one below. It looks at your pages and tells you if you made money or met your goals with the page. In this example, my real goal was to get my friends to encourage my boot purchases, but the goal completions reflected here are visitors who came to a page and then visited at least two more pages (my site-wide goal).

Not a landing page

Not all pages are landing pages. Perhaps you created a new page showing your certifications/awards/testimonials, a page for employee bios and photos, an axillary research report, an explanation about shipping charges, or a new 404 error page. Your goals for the page might not be more traffic. It might be to support your customer service staff by providing a resource they can direct callers to, for example. It might be a legal page like your privacy notice. It might even be a page to satisfy a CEO’s vanity.

Exclude the page from search. For these types of pages you want to check to see that they are not getting search traffic. Be sure that pages like your privacy statement have been excluded in your robots.txt file so the search engines don’t index the page. You might not want to exclude the page from your own site’s search, however, if it has one. Other pages might warrant remaining available for global searches.

Pageviews. You still want to look at your statistics for these pages. For the employee bio page, you might discover that one of your employee’s name is getting search traffic. Maybe that person has a social media following you didn’t know about. For the privacy page, a spike in visits might mean that there’s something negative in the media about your company/organization or about privacy concerns in general that you should know about.

Conversions. It’s important to know which of your web pages are the power hitters and which are critical. A page without much search traffic can still be an important page in moving your visitor along to taking an action you want them to take.

Look at the stats like these on right. You’ll discover if your new page shows up in the path of those visitors who turn into conversions. Maybe that new page about shipping will give more visitors the confidence to make a purchase.

In the example below, we see that a fairly old blog post lead directly to a request for a price quote. It’s time to review that post and learn from it how to make newer ones perform that well. Or update it and repost it social media sites.

Make sure your pages are performing. One of the great things about the Web is that you can quickly learn if you have a failure. You can keep testing a page until it performs at its highest level.

Web Search Basics for Writers

This is for my writer friends who sometimes wonder what they should know about how search engines work and what they can do to make their pages rank higher and be more likely to entice a click.

Let me also advocate for giving writers and editors access to search logs and website analytics. They need to know what keywords are converting and which pages are most successful.

Web Search Basics for Writers

View more presentations from Kristeen Bullwinkle.

Why is no one visiting my site?

This presentation is adapted from one I created for a client. To view the sample images you’ll need to expand the slide show. Just click on the arrows icon to expand the screen. To return to this page, hit the Escape key.

Why is no one visiting my site?

View more presentations from Kristeen Bullwinkle.

Your URL and SEO

Page URLS

You want to make sure your page is indexed correctly, shows in the search results, and will entice a real person to click. That means you need as much information in that URLs as possible. Page URLs provide information to both human readers and search engine indexing programs.

A few content management systems, shopping carts, and blogging tools will create URLs friendly to only the computer. Don’t settle for a URL you can’t remember after seeing it. If a friend sent me a link to www.yourcompany.com/dir4/page53a3?data9902.htm I would not click on it. I’d suspect a phishing scam. To give humans and search engines a better clue to what is on a page, make the URL keyword rich and informative. I’m much more likely to click on a link to www.fuzziercats.com/funny/calico-and-polar-bear.htm and the search engines are more likely to list it and rank it appropriately.

Here are three examples from a search for “green cowboy boots” shown in the reverse order that they appeared on a search results page. All have pretty good titles, but the last has the far better URL.

From the URL above I can assume I’d be buying form NRSWorld, which I’ve never heard of, and then I’d get to some page related to TWIST, whatever that is.

You’ll notice that my search terms are shown in bold font in both the page’s title and URL below. That bold text draws the eye and provides another confirmation to the reader that this is a page highly likely to meet my interests.

The URL is very long in the example below, but it tells me all I need to know. And it uses hyphens, not underscores, to separate words. This makes it easier for me to read and for search engines to locate the keywords. It also uses only lowercase letters, making it less likely for me to make an error if I copy down the URL and then retype it.

The only problem I see with Shepler’s URL is that it does not encourage me to copy and paste it into an email. It’s just too long for that even though it’s very informative. Once I get to the page I find that I can share it on Facebook or Twitter, but unfortunately it doesn’t provide me with a email option. You’ll have to balance these user needs with your own.

If you feel like you’re stuck with unreadable URLs, refer your webmaster to URL Structure at Google’s Webmaster Central for information on how to rewrite your dynamic URLs to static ones.

Your domain name

Why doesn’t my domain name say anything about what I do? I took the chance on using my name as the keyword instead of SEO or Web content. That’s because I have a highly recognizable name and I was getting in-person referrals by name. I knew people would remember my name and it’s unique enough that I have no competition for it. This not how I’d recommend most people choose their domain name.

Choosing a name that reflects your brand and includes a keyword can work well. I could have chosen Bullwinkle SEO, for example.

Just be sure to make it easy to read out loud and easy to spell. I never heard the word etsy before a friend started selling her glasswork on the site, but I could repeat and remember the word. Avoid hyphens. Make it memorable. That matters more than having a keyword in the domain name. Google indicates that it is now giving less weight to domain name keywords. Other search engines will probably follow suit. So choose a name for your audience, not the search engines.

Should you purchase a domain that won’t expire for several years? Google’s Webmaster Central response to that question indicates that it really doesn’t much matter.

Is it too late to change my URLs?

Look at your analytics and see if you have traffic to the pages with URLs you want to change. No traffic; no problem. If you do have traffic, you don’t want to lose it.

Create 301 redirects for any page with traffic that you make a change to. This will keep people from following a link and getting an error page and they are not hard to create. It will also prevent directories from automatically removing your page from a listing because it’s broken. It’s important to note, however, that Google does not move all your page’s rank from the old page to the new one when you use a 301 redirect. You need to balance the possible loss of a small bit of rank with the probability of more clicks by users and more accurate indexing of the page. If your URLs are a jumble of numbers and letters, I recommend making the change.

Contact the owners of the sites that link to the page you’re changing and let them know you’ve created a more memorable URL for the page. Ask them to update their link to your site. Hopefully this will give that site owner a chance to review your site again and add more links. It’s a chance to suggest the words they use to link to your site (Important SEO Hint: ask for a keyword-rich link like “quality bee supplies in Ohio” rather than just “www.KneesBees.com.”) It’s another chance to market your site.

Tracking links to your site (backlinks)

You know that you need to get links to your site. Maybe you’ve submitted your site to a couple directories and begged for a link or two. That’s just the start in a website publisher’s list of tasks regarding links. It’s probably not your most important task, but it does deserve regular attention.

Why should I track backlinks?

You want to know which sites are sending you traffic and why.

Not all backlinks are rated equal. They aren’t even all necessarily good. Are people linking to you with respect or with derision? A directory site full of paid listings is not going to bring you the same type of traffic as a link from a satisfied customer’s Tweet. And neither are as valuable as a link from an authoritative site with positive reviews of your product.

You might find that you’re getting so much free traffic from another site that it’s worth creating a landing page just for those visitors. For example, if you know you’re getting links from a professional association’s site list of recommended resources, you could create a page welcoming them and even providing them with a special offer. (You just need to be sure you give the association the new link you want them to use or route the traffic through server variables.)

These inbound links are crucial as you work on search engine optimization. The search engines like some links better than others, too. A link from a “link farm” or an article that exists just to provide links may provide limited traffic (or get you banned from a search engine index.) It will never pay off as well as a link from a site such as a recognized expert’s curated listing of links or from a popular site with few competing outbound links. It’s important to be popular with a respectable crowd.

They can lose traffic

You could be losing visitors because of outdated links. Maybe you changed the URL for a page because you got a new CMS, moved from .htm to .php pages, or redesigned your site. You need to watch your current backlinks so you’ll know who to inform of any changes in the future. A broken link to your site might be the fault of someone else, but you’ll still suffer the consequences. You might get a visits from motivated people, but they’ll come frustrated that they had to go in search of the correct link themselves.

Links place your site in context

People can link to your site because they are offering it to their readers as an example of how things should be done or because your product is a perfect complement to theirs. They also could be linking to your site as a poor example, or as part of a joke. Your product could appear in a top ten list of useless kitchen items. Your name could appear as a link with the words “this leader” or “this joker.” A lazy web page author might list your heavy-duty containers on a page with canning jars and storage containers because you sell containers—even though they aren’t meant for food.

You want to know this information if you’re concerned with your brand image and reputation.

Search engines can get as confused as readers if the words used as part of the link to your site are inappropriate. If you’re selling childrens’ toys, you don’t want the link to your site to be “dangerous toys” or “as dangerous as this” because the word dangerous then gets associated with your brand name in people’s minds and in search engine indexes.

Backlinks are an excuse to begin or continue a conversation.

Locating a new link to your site means you can now send a message to the author of that link and thank him or her. You can inform them of something new on your site and ask for their feedback on it. You can request that they correct, update or remove an unflattering link.You can ask them what you could do to make them happier with your product or service. Perhaps the linking organization has an event you could sponsor for additional PR and links.

It might be a success metric for your site

For a few blogs or sites created to influence the public or an industry, earning links from governmental or educational sites, or a pundit’s blog might be one measurement of your influence and reach. These links might be as important or more important than the number of visitors to your site who complete a contact form. This might be true if it’s more important for your message and your work to be cited than to be read in it’s entirety.

How to find your backlinks

It used to be easy to track links to your site. All you needed to do was go to one of the major search engines and type “link: www.yoursite.com” and you got a pretty complete list. No more. Now you have to dig.

Pay for it

Link Insight provides reports not only on pages linking to yours, but also pages linking to your competitors. The tool helps identify high quality linking opportunities. It has reports for just about any link-related purpose you could come up with.

Clicky is another option at less cost.

Clicky

Use a free tool

Free analytic tools will only show you links from sites providing you with traffic. They cannot identify broken links to your site or missed linking opportunities.

Yahoo Site Explorer doesn’t provide you with much information, but it does show inbound links.

Yahoo Site Explorer

Google Webmaster also provides just the links, but it’s easier to view them by page rather than just seeing all the links to your domain.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics provides you with better insight into the worth of your backlinks.

: Google Analytics

For more information see How to get the hot links and Ten web stats you should be tracking.

Mine your search logs for content ideas and direction

Your search logs provide great information for developing new content, clarifying and improving current content, and refining your pay per click campaigns. This is true for a blog or a website.

Where to find your search logs

Any analytics program will have a report on terms visitors used to find your site. In Google Analytics you’ll find the terms people used to find your site under Traffic Sources | Keywords. Some programs will also report on terms searched using your site search tool. If you’re using the Google site search engine on your site, uou’ll find those queries under Content | Site Search. Google Webmaster Tools will also give you a list of search queries. Bing Webmaster Center does not (although it provides information on backlinks, which is nice.)

Google Webmaster Tool provides this helpful summary of what it finds to be your top keywords. You’ll want to pay attention to it, too.

Google Webmaster Tools

If you’re in a large organization you might have to speak with someone in IT to get access to search reports for your site. If your subdomain or section of the larger site has its own search function, be sure to ask for searches on your section of the site and for any section related to yours. You want to know if people in a related section are actually wanting your content and just got lost. For example, if you’re a college within a university, you might want to see searches on the admissions or library sites.

Content ideas

If you write a blog, you need as many content ideas as possible and you’re bound to find a few in your logs. Look for the longer set of terms. These are often long tail searches that don’t produce a lot of search results. I found an odd one on my personal blog site: age 32 eyelashes growing gray. I’m not sure why my site turned up for those terms, but if I wrote on topics about health or aging I’d know I could write a post about premature graying (or perceived premature graying.)

Search queries are also often written as complete questions to which you can respond. An example: does cutting holes in a shipping container weaken them. You might want to watch for these type of question queries if you’re creating or editing an FAQ.

The next step is to look at how people using these search terms behaved. For the eyelash example above I see a 100% bounce rate. I know that the searcher didn’t find anything of interest on my site. I’m a little concerned that the searcher for amount 0f liquid morphine to overdose did stay on my site. I might want to go back and re-read my postings on outdated medical advice to be sure I don’t have anything posted that would assist with a suicide.

Look at search terms where you have low bounce rates, high pages per visit, and high time on site numbers. This can give you a sense of what content is sticky enough to engage your visitors. You might want to expand on the concepts that surround these search terms.

It will also give you an idea of terms bringing you visitors, but where you don’t have the quality of content to keep them on your site. In the example above, if I wanted to sell videos featuring children’s rhymes, I might want to consider writing new copy. But first I’d run that search myself, locate the page that comes up in results, and then check on the overall performance of that page. It could be that people searching for choosing rhymes just wanted the words to “One Potato Two.” In that case I might want to consider adding a new section to my site that features words or lyrics to common children’s poems and rhymes. Or adding something similar to my Facebook page or adding a space where people could vote for favorite rhymes they sang as a child.

Look for interesting topics showing up. You can use these insights to guide your social media discussions. If people are searching for something unexpected, ask your community for their thoughts. Are the searches you’re seeing for pink outdoor paint reflecting a trend among designers, for example?

Site search terms are a great place to locate synonyms you might want to use in your copy. They might even give you an idea of what type of people are not seeing the terms they expect. For example, someone might be searching for plantain lily when you always refer to that plant as a hosta.

Site fixes

You have a few choices to make when you see synonyms you’re not using in your content turn up in your logs.

If you have access to the search appliance, add that term and your preferred synonym to the thesaurus or create a keymatch term. Or ask your IT staff if they can make this update to your search tool for you. You want to be sure that someone searching for plantain lily sees search results as if they searched for hosta.
Review your navigation. If people are using your site search to find pages that should be easily accessible from your navigation, you know you need to do some user testing. If you’re in an industry which uses a lot of jargon and you might find these synonyms to be worth testing with your desired audiences to see if they are better recognized or understood. Using your audience’s language is always preferred.
Look at your page headings and titles in terms of terms that are showing up. Are you using these same terms or keywords? How about in your meta descriptions?

Search engine marketing

Google AdWords report option

If you are seeing terms in a search query report that have absolutely nothing to do with your product or service, add them to your keywords as negative keywords. That way you won’t be paying for clicks on hickory switch when you only sell hickory nuts.

Check your keyword reports to see which keywords are showing good conversions and consider expanding your content around those terms. Again, look at those long search phrases for the long tail keywords to exploit.

You might also spot a few keywords in your logs that you’ll want to add to the keywords you bid on in your advertising.

You might even find a clue to a small niche market under-served by you or your competitors.

Plus, looking through these logs can be entertaining. You might be surprised by the odd things people search for. Just remember that if you’re looking at your own site’s search logs, there will always be a few searches by people thinking they are searching the entire web universe. They didn’t really think you’d have world cup soccer scores on your farm equipment sales site. But the search for bunny fur hair dye remover might be legitimate.

Caring for ALL your content: Micro content

You’ve written your web page or blog post, using your keywords and providing great content, but have you written great micro content for that page yet?

What do I mean by micro content? I mean the small bits of copy that can make a huge difference in terms of SEO and getting a reader to click.

Headlines and page titles

Headlines are crucial. You want keywords in the headline for the search engines and for your readers. The clever headline that might capture your attention in a magazine already in your hands will not always work as a page title. If you have the job of posting magazine content online, you’ll want to review the headlines and perhaps write a new page title for the online version or use the “kicker” headline if the story has one. “Nuts to that!” might be a surprising and engaging headline for a story about walnut shells abrasives in a magazine for jewelers, but seeing the headline in search results won’t get a jeweler looking for polishing solutions to click on your link.

You don’t want to appear in search results with a listing like this—without a meaningful page title or description.

When you or a reader decides to share your page with others as a bookmark, a tweet or through Facebook, you want to a meaningful title to display.

I really respect TED.com’s page titles. Look at all the information it contains: presenter’s name, presentation title, media type, and then the source. I know exactly what to expect before I click and the keywords don’t shout.

Subheads

Subheads, like the one above, help to break up your text and make it more easily scanned and read. Subheads are another location for your keywords.

Calls to action

Many of your pages will include a call to action. You might be encouraging your readers to change their behavior, buy your product, send a donation, leave a comment, try a sample, or register for training. Your call to action might change depending on the page. Your calls might increase in complexity as a reader gets deeper into your site.

Image captions and alt text

Eyetracker studies have shown that readers’ eyes fixate on image captions. So make the caption meaningful and provide a reason to move on to the actual story copy. If you’re posting an article about crafting a felt rabbit, use a photo caption like “Creating a felt rabbit takes only three simple steps” or “Create an irresistible toy pet for your cat.”

The alt attribute for images serves a different purpose. It’s for people unable to view an image. The alt attribute should fully describe the photo so “Blue felt rabbit with exaggerated ears” would be an appropriate tag. Using keywords here is still a good idea. The description you use will help them show up properly in an image search.

Before you post your copy or provide it to someone else to post, please consider these smaller examples of important marketing copy.

How to get the hot links

A critical element to any SEO or online marketing strategy is obtaining links to your site. You want people to talk about you and to send their friends and viewers your way. Here are a few ways to entice those links. Think content, content, content and types of content. And consider all the ways you can let people know that the content is available.

Content worth sharing

No matter what type of content you’re creating it has to make the person or site linking to it look good. Otherwise why should they provide the link? It has to address your audience and their needs and interests. Ask yourself these questions as you write:

Is this relevant to my target audience? Is this something they care about? Does this answer a concern that keeps them awake at night?
Does this help build relationships?
Is this immediately useful?
Does this build upon the common interests of my readers?
Is this novel and unique? A “wow” factor really helps to get your content forwarded and talked about.
Is it funny?
Is it emotional? Can the reader feel your passion? Can you tell a good story?
Is it positive and optimistic?
Is this something I feel strongly about?

Articles, white papers, DIY guides, product specifications

Many people are online because they have a problem and are looking for an answer. Some will want a quick and dirty answer. Others will want a thorough and detailed answer. Often it will be appropriate for you to write in both styles for the same content. You may want to create one type of article for submission to another site as a guest blog entry, for example, and have a more detailed article on your own site. Then include a link for more information to your own site (but check on the rules of the publishing site first.)

Profiles

These are the easiest links to obtain because you are creating them. There are plenty of places for you to create profiles for you or the public faces of your company. Be sure LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social site profiles include links to your website. They can be links to your home page, or to the company blog, or to the profile you keep on your website. If someone in your company has a speaking engagement then be sure to have a profile of them on your site and give that link to the people working on the publicity for the event.

Press releases

The press release may or not be dying, but if you’re doing or announcing something worthy of a press release be sure you’re including relevant links for the press to use on their own sites. Include the URL for a relevant photo essay on your site, or for a page of additional resources, or for a video. If the press doesn’t pick up your story, try presenting it to your industry association.

Signature files

You probably have a standard signature file you use when sending email. But do you have one to use when you’re posting to forums or discussion groups? Do you rethink the link you provide before you send the email or post the comment? You might want to customize the link depending on the content of your message.

Your local listings

You may sell your product or service throughout the nation, but that doesn’t mean that the folks at home don’t deserve to see your listing in local directories. Obtain listings from wherever you have a physical address.

Most professional or industry associations have a listing for their members. Be sure to use it. For both search engines and potential buyers/clients, a link from an association implies your trustworthiness.

Alternate formats

If you post content to a site focused on media type, like a video to YouTube or a presentation to SlideShare, there’s usually an opportunity for you to include a link in the description or in the media itself.

All these links appearing in numerous places and which keep appearing over time inform search engines that your content is valued. It also means that your links are more likely to appear in different types of searches. People aren’t just searching on Google any longer. Sometimes your potential customers are searching on Twitter or a review site. You want your links to appear anywhere your intended audience might be.

One more piece of advice: Pay attention to your keywords when you are writing your own links or suggesting links for others. You want those keywords in your links. In other words, try for “hand-painted, customized sinks from Sinks-R-Us.com” rather than just “Sinks-R-Us.com.”

And keep at it. You’ll see results.

Why do I need SEO for my website? and when?

How will you be found?

We all want positive attention and we want it for our websites, too. We all turn to search engines for answers and direction these days. Search engine optimization (SEO) provides a competitive advantage in attracting visitors and customers. In addition, SEO produces clear and measurable returns in terms of number of visitors, their activity on the site and purchases made.

If you’re a small business just starting out or a large company with a strong brand, the need for ongoing SEO is still there. You want to show up in searches for your company name, for your product or service, for your locality, for specialty markets—however your potential or loyal customers might look for you.

When you start or rebrand a business or non-profit

Design

The SEO process can begin as soon as you know what your company will deliver and who you want for customers. Even before you have a web site, you should have some thoughts on this. Communicate them to the designer of your new or redesigned web site. And when you’re interviewing designers or programmers, ask them what they will do to make sure their design does not harm or hamper SEO. Even if you’re not sure if the answer you get is correct, you’ll know if you hear any hemming and hawing on the issue. If your designer wants to do everything in Flash and can’t tell you how he or she will make it SEO friendly, then move on to the next designer. Your programmer should be able to tell you how she or he will create pages that can be easily read and understood by both humans and search engines.

Having a plan for your SEO early will allow you to use that plan in your site’s architecture. For instance, if you’ll be selling an entire selection of door knobs, you should know what term you’ll be using for SEO. Will you be optimizing for “door levers,” “door knobs” or “lock sets”? Name your directory and files with the most appropriate term(s).

Content

Writers for your site’s content will want to know your SEO strategy. If you’re going to optimize for an industry term instead of a general term (like cardiomyopathy instead of heart disease), your content producers need to know. They need to know what terms to use in headlines and photo captions. Conversely, your subject experts need to keep your SEO adviser informed of current jargon and interest trends.

SEO insights often generate ideas for new site content. A good SEO adviser can also provide statistics that show how successful different pieces of content or different writers have been. Your SEO adviser can often help turn a poorly performing piece of content into one more frequently visited and read.

Community of sites

Obtaining well-worded inbound links to your site is crucial to good SEO. Identifying sites that could and should link to yours is something that can be researched even before your site is completed. Knowing your marketing strategy will help with this and with the timing of requesting those links. Identification of your major competitors and their strategies can also begin this early. While much of this research was conducted when you produced your first business plan, competitive research should be an on-going process that continually informs business decisions, including SEO.

When you’re considering a new CMS

A new CMS can and will cause a lot of stress in your office. Keep some of it to a minimum by making sure that page templates facilitate content optimization. In other words, you should be able to control title and heading tags, meta tags, and alt tags. Make sure you have options for including user generated content and social media, keeping in mind that new social media tools and sites will be coming in the future.

When sales and sales leads are being evaluated

Data from your site’s analytics program, from your SEO adviser, and from your sales team will all help target phrases to generate more visits and inquiries from the people most likely to convert into a sale. Providing a positive experience before and after purchase, creating and fostering conversations around your brand, and getting coverage on trusted websites can contribute to improved search engine rankings and sales.

SEO isn’t an isolated marketing tactic. It’s an ongoing process to be reviewed, updated, and evaluated regularly in collaboration with other business functions when possible.

Online marketing, content strategy and site optimization