When it comes to SEO you need to define your strategy upfront, as there are so many moving parts to getting SEO right, that one weak link and your entire efforts can go to waste.
The key things to look at for your strategy include:
If you nail the above, you will be onto a winning strategy that will propel your business and help you to dominate SERPs.
In an age of content, people have forgotten the importance of technical SEO. As technologies advance and websites become easier to build, technical SEO becomes even more important. You need experts to take care of implementing changes.
Too many SEO strategies do not reach their full potential because of a reluctance in wanting to implement changes. Ultimately, recommendations are made and advised as the SEO agency will see potential upside to making changes.
Key elements of technical SEO include ensuring your code is clean, your server calls are effective, site architecture is properly set up and site upkeep and maintenance is looked after regularly.
An SEO agency usually has the right mix of technical expertise to look after all of the above. You will be investing in many resources, rather than just one or two, which can really help drive your SEO ambitions.
Your users need something to look at or read, so content development for SEO is extremely important.
One thing that a lot of people forget is that you don’t need to keep throwing up new content to get ranking or traffic, you can also work on your current content to further optimise it. Ultimately, you want to create content that is capable of not only ranking, but potentially getting to “Position 0“.
Content trends do include listicles - short, easy to digest content pieces - but ultimately, you need to do your research. You need to take a look at the first page of search results and see what others are doing in terms of their content. Is there an answer box? Is the average content length 200 words or 2000? Do you need to look at a certain number of internal links, and what should your header tags include? These are all questions that need answering when you are developing new content or reevaluating your current content.
A strong SEO agency with content capabilities will be able to give you the answers to the above fairly quickly. At Bruce Clay we use our own in house developed tool set to compare websites, web pages and keyword level content to provide our partners solid SEO results!
There are too many businesses that set out to optimise everything user the moon. You are really going to spread yourself thin if you try to do this. If an seo agency gives you a package that sounds a little too good to be true, then it probably is. SEO takes time and should always be focused around your business objectives. For example, we have optimised Johnson and Johnson sites over many years, one of the brands being Neutrogena. Now, playing in the beauty sector is difficult, and if we were to try and go after every keyword under the moon, we would struggle. Hence, we looked at the brand business plan and aligned on looking to dominate a certain segment of the beauty category on order to drive more qualified traffic and ultimately, brand awareness. This then, resulted in sales uplift.
Most business fail to realise that they cannot go after everything (unless they have an unlimited budget). Hence, you need to look at your business and what matters to you, then pursue that relentlessly.
Any qualified SEO agency would do this for you - it is not about going after everything, it is about chasing what matters. Take a look at our Sharaf DG case study about ‘Position 0’ to understand this better.
You need to know what you are looking for in terms of success when it comes to SEO. For many companies, simple “traffic”, will be enough, but the question is, is it really? In most cases, usually not.
It is important to consider the holistic impact of SEO. In a lot of instances, traffic may remain constant, as search volumes may be seasonal, however, post click metrics may be better. Time on site, page views and conversions are key indicators of SEO success. Ultimately, you need to decide if less traffic and a high conversion rate is what your business needs, or vice versa. Every business is different, so the same success metrics probably wont work for everyone.
SEO agencies should be able to tell you what success metrics you should be measuring and why! Any partner that works on your assets should understand you business, and if they truly do, they will look to optimise the right metrics for you. That is why it is very important that you choose the right seo agency to partner with, or look for the right consultation. Contact Bruce Clay APAC should you need a hand!
