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Website + SEO
There is no piece of a digital strategy more important than search engine optimization (SEO). As the data makes abundantly clear, good SEO can be the difference between the success or failure of a business. Consider the following:
- 68% of any "online experience" begins online, but only 0.63% of searches go to the second page. To be successful, you must show up on the first page of the SEO results.
- SEO remains the top source of leads for 60% of marketers.
- SEO drives 1000% more traffic than social.
SEO is critical in all industries, but perhaps none more significant than information technology. As a technology-based industry, customers expect you to have a rich, robust website that customers can easily find and access. As such, your IT company needs an active SEO strategy that makes it easy for customers to find you.
There are many ways to build such an SEO strategy. A monthly campaign is one such example. However, a monthly SEO campaign must contain certain elements.
What is a monthly SEO campaign?
A monthly SEO campaign is an effort that changes every month to adjust for ongoing changes to the SEO landscape. World events, the needs of your customers, and technological changes may drive website, social media, and content changes that must occur to properly conduct your SEO campaign.
In other words: SEO is not a "set it and forget it" initiative. Instead, it requires constant monitoring, regular analysis, and ongoing research to be the most effective.
What are the most critical elements of a monthly SEO campaign?
As the name implies, a monthly SEO campaign should be comprehensive and updated regularly. There are many components to such a campaign.
1. Keyword Research
Keywords are what individuals will type into search engines when searching for something.
Many of your core keywords will remain the same. For example, you'll want to rank high if someone googles your business category and location. You must ensure you load your website and metadata with appropriate keywords.
However, you may alter your keywords based on your services. For example, let's say there was a new virus threatening business systems or that a foreign country was attempting to gain access to computer systems. You would want to rank high for "[name of the threat][name of hometown]" searches.
Fortunately, adjustments to your metadata and an active SEO campaign can help you optimize your SEO.
2. Fresh Content
Regularly updated, fresh content can alert search engines that your content is helpful to searchers. In addition, search engines often pick up social media content, which can feed back to your main website.
When it comes to social media content, it should generally fall into one of two categories. First, content can be evergreen. This means your business can reuse that content and make it relevant time and time again. You can regularly use this content on social media, perhaps updating as circumstances dictate. Alternatively, it should be extremely timely. Social media content can create useful and relevant information about current events, like new technology businesses can use or potential IT security threats.
Timely and evergreen content do not necessarily contradict each other, and there is often an overlap. Content that is both timely and evergreen is best for monthly SEO purposes.
3. Improve your E-A-T
E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This acronym specifically impacts your SEO ranking. When Google's algorithms determine how high to rank your page, it will examine your page for E-A-T. As such, having high-quality content is critical to SEO, particularly for a field like IT, which is so technically oriented.
You can improve your E-A-T by:
- Containing information about your qualifications and expertise on a page on your website.
- Linking to other experts in your field, such as academic journals or major and respected vendors.
- Getting links from websites with high levels of trust in your field.
- Updating pages regularly, including new information as it becomes available.
4. Page Speed
Page speed has been increasingly used for SEO purposes. Google seeks to direct users only to webpages that load quickly and give users an optimal viewing experience.
Your content should load quickly, usually within three seconds or less. You want to keep your content streamlined and remove unnecessary widgets that may slow your page. You also want to ensure you optimize your page speed across many devices. Fortunately, Google has a PageSpeed Insights tool that allows you to determine page speed. This tool checks the speed of a website across numerous devices, including mobile ones, allowing you to ensure your page loads quickly.
You will need to check page speed regularly and ensure that newer technological changes don't slow your website or break any elements. These checks should be part of any monthly SEO campaign.
5. Evaluation + Adjustments
A monthly SEO campaign doesn't just stop once a month ends. Instead, it bleeds into the next month. This begs the question: How did your monthly SEO campaign work? Was it successful?
To determine the answer to this question, you need a regular evaluation of key data points. This includes:
- How many page views and unique visitors were generated from your SEO efforts?
- Did you use paid ads? Were they successful?
- What keywords were used to find your website?
- What was your click-through rate (CTR)?
- How high is your bounce rate? Are people clicking on other content on your website, or are they arriving and immediately navigating away?
Furthermore, you must adjust your content to match Google's search engine algorithm changes. The company does not explicitly delineate the various factors that impact search engine algorithms, but they do announce when its algorithm changes. Are you tracking these changes and adjusting your content appropriately? Website Grader will scan your website and identify areas you can improve to benefit from search traffic. You should also consider newer changes to Google's algorithm, which include:
- Passages Google analyzes the specific sections of your website and presents the content as answers to search queries.
- People also ask questions that appear at the top of any Google search. This relevant content can help individuals find answers to questions they may be seeking answers to.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is critical to making your content and your website work for you to drive demand. This tactic does hand-in-hand with website design and your content marketing strategy. Need help evaluating your tactics for the right return on investment? Grab the MarketDesign Website Audit and test how well your website is performing for you.
