On the previous post, basic knowledge and principles about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) were explained (I recommend having a look at it if you are not too sure about this concept). SEO is a widely online marketing strategy used that provides web sites fast reachable (Yalçın & Köse, 2010). Many companies use it as a good way to achieve its full potential, incentivizing promotion.
So, what’s your excuse?
Although it is quite obvious that the current generation is internet dependent, some brands are still finding it hard to apply the SEO strategy, mainly due to the lack of understanding and the lack of trust in e-commerce and digital marketing, (Studer, 2000).
According to Grappone, (2011) some companies chose not to do SEO for the following three reasons:
- Not enough money: just focus on organic optimization, improvements can still be made spending little or no money at all.
- Not enough time: take it as long-term process and use the time you do have.
- The website is not good enough: Don’t worry, nobody starting to use SEO has a perfect website.
“SEO is a very flexible process” (Grappone, 2011)
How to get it right?
Hampson (2018) explores the steps you can take to improve your SEO:
- Organic search engine optimization vs sponsored links
- Choose your platform
- Optimize your website for mobile phones
- Get your pages to load quickly
- Content of your website pages: provide customers with relevant, uniquely worded information that cannot be found elsewhere on the internet
- Pay attention to coding
- Send traffic to your site: via links on other websites
- Write blogs
In addition, here is a very useful checklist which can be used as a starting point from the book Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Grappone (2011):
- Convert graphics to HTML text
- Edit elements of the HTML code on every page of the site
- RE-embedded Flash files with alternate HTML text
- Create a specialized text file called robots.txt and have it placed in the root directory of the site
- Set up a server-side redirect
- Rewrite page text to reflect more commonly searched items
- Change file-naming conventions
What are the potential risks and why do people get it wrong?
“The biggest mistake many businesses make is concentrating on what they think the search engines are looking for, rather than what their site users will actually want,” says Westcott. (Evening Standard, 2014)
Failure to conform to search engine guidelines can lead to penalties, such as worse placement in the serps or an outright ban from the search engine. I recommend reading the following article to know more about the potential risks and what could go wrong: Worst Practices in search engine optimization by Malaga (2008).
How to measure and track the success?
First of all, there are three key performance indicators (KPIs) that should always be considered when measuring an SEO campaign’s effectiveness:
- Rankings
- Traffic
- Conversions
KPIs will be used to track the following metrics:
1. Search Engine Share of Referring Visits – Every month, keep track of the contribution of each traffic source for your site. Are you building a larger base of site users? And what are these users doing on your site?
2. Search Engine Referrals – Google and the Yahoo!-Bing alliance are the major engines.
3. Visits Referred by Specific Search Engine Terms and Phrases – The keywords that send traffic are a very important part . You’ll want to keep track of these on a regular basis to help identify new trends, increase your performance on key terms, and find terms that are bringing significant traffic. Tip: Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner can help you work out which keywords your content should feature to maximise its chances of being found, (Evening Standard, 2014).
4. Conversion Rate by Search Query Term/Phrase – This will allow us to check our rankings and the analytics will also tell us what page these visitors landed on.
5. Number of pages receiving at least one visit from search engines
Some tips:
There are numerous online resources, such as www.seochat.com, www.searchenginewatch.com, and forums.digitalpoint.com that provide a wealth of excellent information on SEO. (Malaga, 2008)
Finally, after spending money, time and probably a lot of effort into this SEO campaign it is key to understand Chaffey’s RACE Framework (2012), which focuses on “Reach, Act, Convert, Engage”. This will be key in order to ensure that your new gained customers are going to stick with you and become loyal consumers of your products.
References
Enge, E., Spencer, S.M. & Stricchiola, J. 2015, The art of SEO: mastering search engine optimization, Third edn, O’Reilly, Beijing.
Evening Standard (2014) Why tag along when you can succeed?: Search engine optimisation helps would-be customers find your website, Evening Standard Limited, London (UK).
Grappone, J. 2011, Search engine optimization: an hour a day. John Wiley & Sons.
Hampson, A. 2018, “How to improve your organic search engine optimisation”, Journal of Aesthetic Nursing, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 48-49.
Malaga, R. 2008, Worst practices in search engine optimization, ACM, NEW YORK.
Studer, B.M. 2000, Technology Journal: Privacy Concerns Hold Back Growth Of E-Commerce — Consultant Says Lack of Trust Is Keeping Consumers Away, Europe edn, Dow Jones & Company Inc, Brussels.
Yalçın, N., & Köse, U. 2010, What is search engine optimization: SEO?. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9, 487-493.