Not that it ever left, but SEO is making a comeback. By that, I mean that marketers, business owners, and even casual website admins are starting to understand that there are no shortcuts. You can’t rely on PPC/CPC to sustain your numbers and drive profits long term without huge and endless investments, and any and any alleged “free” method for driving traffic to your site is going to prove to be a complete waste of your time.
Now, let’s be clear about one thing: Keywords matter, but they’re not the be-all, end-all of your SEO strategy. There’s a lot more to it that many marketers – even seasoned internet marketing professionals – often realize.
SEO and Content Marketing
All of your content plays a role in the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. I’ve mentioned this numerous times in the past, but it bears both repeating and clarification. I’m not suggesting that your content is poor or ineffective. It might be very effective when used correctly in a specific marketing campaign, but there is more to think about when it comes to optimizing it for maximum exposure.
Think about it: Would you rather spend the money on content creation just to see an immediate return, or would you rather that content had a longer shelf life (and made you more money)? If you would opt for the latter, keep reading. I’m going to give you a list of things you need to do to boost the effectiveness of your SEO from keywords to responsiveness and everything in between.
Assessing Your SEO Efforts
Take a good look at each of the following, and give your site a fair and honest assessment of how healthy it actually is. If you spot any glaring issues, tend to them immediately. Your site and its rankings will thank you. Ask yourself, on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being the best), where your site ranks in the following areas, and decide where changes are necessary.
#1 – Your Copy
Of course, I’m going to start here. I run a successful copywriting company, and we place a heavy emphasis on SEO for all of our clients. No, keywords aren’t everything, but they are part of the framework of successful copy. Quality, detailed writing is, as well.
Many marketers think that if they just seed with the right density of keywords, it will be enough to sustain SEO long term. The truth of the matter is that keyword trends change constantly. Content that boosted SEO last year may or may not be quite as effective this year. In fact, those trends can, and often do, change much more quickly.
The bottom line here is simple. Your copy has to be good. The subject matter needs to be relevant and relate directly to the theme of your site. The writing needs to be good. Flimsy 500-word blog articles will only get you so far (although a solid, well-structured one of the same length can net you good SEO results for quite a while).
#2 – Your Visuals
I’ve said this before, too: Produce or select visuals that define your brand (or at least the content of a specific page), and write copy around them. Never do it the other way around. The vast majority of your competition gets this backward. If you start with what your audience is most likely to notice first and build around that, you will hold people’s attention far longer than you will just tossing a stock photo onto a blog.
#3 – Your Updates
Top-ranked sites are always offering new content to their audiences. The easiest way to do this is to keep a blog and keep it updated regularly. It’s not the only thing you should be doing, but it ranks high in importance because this is where you accomplish two things: communicating that you are an authority in your niche and sending out that keyword beacon to the search engine spiders so they can find you.
If you are constantly updating your blog, be sure to keep new visuals coming, too. WordPress makes this very easy by allowing you the option of setting featured images with your blogs that weigh heavily on your SEO rankings, as well as seeding your posts with relevant images throughout.
#4 – Your Use of Meta Data
Get into the habit of assigning meta descriptions to every page and to every piece of written content. Limit page meta descriptions to 145-155 characters. This will ensure that when people search for something that’s on your site, they get a clear and concise description of what they’re actually going to find when they get there.
#5 – Your Overall Site Health
Finally, I’m adding this one in here because if you neglect it, nothing else really matters. You want to make sure your site is responsive and that your pages load quickly. Rescale your images to make them smaller in file size, and always include ALT text that identifies what the image contains.
Test your pages out cross-platform and on a number of devices, and see what size font works best for most displays. Work on the formatting, as well. Short, concise paragraphs are far more effective and help with SEO far better than lengthy bricks of text. There are numerous other factors that affect your site’s SEO, and there are plenty of comprehensive tools out there that will give you at least an idea of the areas of your site that need the most work.