Common Things About SEO That You Should Know About

When it comes to SEO, there is always questions about how to use it, how much it should cost, is it worth understanding, and more. I asked a friend and colleague of mine who is the owner of an online marketing firm called PalmettoSoft to come in and talk about these common questions and concerns that people have. Meet Rhett while watching this talk and if you have further questions about SEO or his company’s services be sure to reach out to him or place your questions in the comments below.

New Partnership for SEO and Strategetic Online Marketing: PalmettoSoft

Pretty regularly I am asked about SEO, and my response is usually the same; I know a lot about it, but it’s a service that should be handled by a company who does that entirely. As a photographer and web designer, it’s part of my job to understand how SEO works on a basic and pragmatic level. However I am happy to introduce Rhett DeMille of PalmettoSoft.

What I like the most about Rhett is that he’s got the same approach to customer service as I do. In the way that taking time to explain how his process works, understanding the true needs of his clients, and proving his efforts with progress reports like the one below.

Palmetto Soft - Sample Report 1

 

Rhett DeMille has been working in the IT field the last 14 years, and PalmettoSoft, his current company, will turn 11 this May. In the earlier days, most his professional time was spent on web design projects and their associated customer support efforts. Fast forward to four hundred websites later; his company now specializes in Internet marketing where he leverages previous experience to create custom solutions which help businesses grow.

Rhett DeMille

Rhett also serves as the account manager for his clients so he can have a high level understanding of each account at all times. To further bolster this effort, his managers work through project management software with built in methodologies and business rules to always provide customers timely and professional service. Basically all projects and tasks are tracked and recorded to ensure the best client service available– all with a personal touch.

Moving forward, PalmettoSoft strives to continue to help businesses grow by utilizing experience, ethics and sound principles in the quick and ever changing world of the Internet.

Be sure to check out Rhett’s website and apply for the Free SEO Analysis that he offers. You’d be surprised what you’d learn from just that report. Then you can create a marketing plan that will be successful for 2016.

Measuring Your Web Content’s SEO Value

Most people are familiar with the term search engine optimization, or commonly termed, SEO.  This is a critical aspect in both design and success of your websites content and drawing people to it via search rankings. So consider it not the roof of the house but truly a part of the foundational structure of your website.  And there are great rewards if your website contains SEO rich keywording and proper tags.

“A website isn’t worth having, if no one can find it!

So if you really want to build traffic to your website or blog, you will be thinking of SEO as something paramount to your site’s developments. Majority of webmasters only do the things required to gain a good amount of search engine traffic, but very little actually measure their site’s SEO value.

You Are Being Out Ranked!
One of the best articles I’ve read about rankings comes for the industry gurus of HubSpot.  Rebecca Churt’s blog titled, “How to Conduct a Competitive SEO Audit to Outrank Industry Rivals” says it all.  In this article, she lists 5 Simple Steps to Perform Your Own Competitive SEO Analysis which include:
-articulate your buyer personas;
-identify key competitors;
-explore what the competition looks like; and more!

Measuring via Your Analytics

So much data is now available through the various analytics systems, and the one most commonly used (and respected) is Google Analytics.  The key to successful utilization of it is to focus on the data that matters most. By focusing on the reporting metrics, you can get a sense of the true ROI and the value of your SEO efforts.  Start your analysis by looking at the number of visitors to your site, where they came from, and most importantly, what search terms they used.  Just this preliminary information alone, will tell you is how well you are doing  at getting more people to visit your website while increasing the visibility of your business and/or service.

What’s the Hook in Link Building?

Within the SEO communities, you will often hear the term “links” and/ or link building.  What that really means is that a link from another website links to your company’s site.  SEO link building requires that the site linking to yours must indeed be trustworthy link and furthermore, related to your business. Valuable links come from trusted sites like:

  • Educational institutions that your company has a relationship with;
  • Local and national organizations you or your company has an affiliation to;
  • Any number of relatively unknown but reputable business and industry-related directories;
  • Similar industry online publications; and more!

The Key is Keywords

While considering the written content of your website, make a conscious selections of commonly used keywords and phrases to increase your chances of climbing the search engine ranks.  Think of yourself as the consumer and even consider looking up certain terms in a Thesaurus to determine commonly used words that most users in your industry might use.  A test run on your success at this would be search engine sites and paste them in the major search engine sites you want to be found on, then hit the search button. Whatever page your site is will determine how effective your SEO investments are.

Honk Your Horn For More Traffic!

Increased traffic for your website and if you’re not getting enough of traffic as evidenced by your analytics, it means you need to tweak your process (eg, keywording) and do more optimization. Try keeping a record (easy enough in an Excel spreadsheet) how much traffic your website increases after each new method is implemented.  Then move forward, scale back or consider a new method based on the data collected and analyzed.  This is a simple way to determine the true value of your SEO efforts.

The Sum of it All

SEO is instrumental to content builders whether you are a web designer or blogger.  We don’t have the luxury of ignoring the SEO value of our websites; investing time and resources into a zero-yielding ROI and a non-existent consumer base.

Make Life Easy WP Plugins

If you’re a web designer or blogger, you know that WordPress (WP) has quickly become one of the fastest growing, most popular content management systems (CMS) around.  It’s extremely quick to install as well as easy to navigate and master.  And they are consistently evolving across all platforms with simple-to-use themes as well as free updates and plugins that are only a few clicks away via the dashboard  Most of us WP users and web designers purchase a theme with majority of the bells & whistles we think we’ll need.  But sometimes the theme falls short, you need your website to have certain functionality that you could not have foreseen needing or you need to add functionality at the behest of your client.  So this is where plugins plug in-filling in the gap between wishing and less limitations.

In the last year, I’ve begun having more fun in the dashboard and realize that I’ve been missing out on all the cool plugins that make building/editing a site more efficient as well as functional.  Some are tried and true while others are indeed new.  So here’s my list of my favorite WordPress plugins to date.

All-in-One SEO Pack –  All in One SEO Pack Pro v2.1 improves on the most popular WordPress SEO plugin.  Not only can you set site-wide defaults in WordPress as well as customize the search engine settings for each individual WordPress post, page and custom post type but now you can manage exactly how search engines crawl each page or post.  All in One SEO Pack Pro even gives you complete control over your social meta or OpenGraph meta so you can control what appears on your favorite social media sites.

Custom Link Widget –  A Simple, straight-forward plugin that lets you insert links as the widget. Just insert your link, name it and it will convert it to a hyperlink automatically.

Image Widget – A simple image widget that uses the native WordPress media manager to add image widgets to your site.  It automatically resizes and aligns your image, allows you to link the image and even allows you to override your theme template!

Post Types Order – You can custom order the posts without making any php file changes or publish date resetting.  Simply install plugin, drag & drop.

Widget Logic – This widget gives you extra control field called “Widget logic” that lets you control the pages that the widget will appear on.

Ultimate TinyMCE – A chock full kitchen sink of editorial/functional options.

WP Touch – This plugin reformats your website to a mobile site for easy navigation & shortcuts on Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Blackberry Storm and Torch, Palm Pre and other touchscreen smartphones.

Acurax Social Media Widget – This so ridiculously simple plugin lets you define the icon style & add multiple social media linked icons to your Twitter,Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube,RSS Feed,Linkedin, and Google+.

TweetMeme Retweet Buttonadds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.

So there you have it – just a few ways to make WordPress work better for you.

I’d love to hear your faves – which are some of your favorite plugins?

Publishing Content: Only When Necessary

Hand writing in cloudsOne of the major ideas that we push to our clients is to continue to create new content for their website. However this is sometimes tougher than it may seem on the surface. When we think of your website, we’re looking at slight changes either in strategic keywords, new pages, new products, and new posts. One of the easier things to publish would be blog posts. Though there has to be a level of consistency, it certainly does help your search rank when you publish great relevant content.

Lets first look at what would be considered relevant:

Consider how your post will be relevant to your target audience. It isn’t enough anymore just to put out content all on the wall and hope something sticks. Or hope that one of out every 10 will be seen by someone who will find it relevant while the rest are just “there”.

Post Linking. While you may have many posts on your website and blog, linking some of your keywords to other relevant posts or product pages on your main site is actually a great way to drive more traffic to other great and relevant content.

Keep an eye on your analytics.   Imagine getting behind the wheel of your car, and driving blind folded. It’s just as much of a bad idea as creating new content for your website, yet not paying attention to what keywords, links, and other data is bringing people to your website. Also seeing what your bounce rate is for your pages and dissecting them to find ways of either matching the expected content or installing new widgets like videos to keep visitors on your pages for a longer time.

Blog posts should be consistent. When considering a blog for your website, understand first that it is not an easy job. You’ll need to create great content on a regular basis. So your first few posts will be a breeze because they’ll most likely be things you talk about in your sales pitches, but in the long run it will be challenging. So you may want to start with 1 or 2 posts a week and on strategic days of the week and at strategic times. For example Mondays and Tuesdays around 9-11AM are great times for business and marketing articles, while weekend late mornings are great for other posts.

Trending topics within your industry. You should already have your finger to the pulse of your industry. New developments on the horizon, software updates pending for release; these are all great topics that many professionals in your audience will be talking about. So give them something to talk about, but from your own company perspective. Everyone may be looking forward to Windows 8 mobile coming out, but what if you have some constructive points about it that no one has yet discovered.

So we’ve covered a good few things today. Do you have some additions to what we’ve discussed? Please feel free and add your comments below.

Image credit: noomhh / 123RF Stock Photo