Brands and SEO professionals must take responsibility for the performance of the websites they manage and manage.
Applying these six SEO truths will help you achieve next-level website performance, according to Bruce Clay, founder and president of digital marketing optimization firm Bruce Clay Inc., who spoke at SMX Advanced.
1. SEO should be a strategic enterprise-wide initiative
The entire organization is involved in SEO. It starts at the leadership level: Everyone needs to understand that SEO is important, commit to it, and make it a priority.
You can’t just do your SEO on Monday. A person cannot do SEO randomly. It won’t work if you’re not working on SEO every day.
The organization should think about SEO every time there is a meeting to discuss the change of website. Someone in this room needs to ask, “How does this affect SEO?”
“How can we improve the overall quality and performance of our website so that it actually drives traffic or meets a business KPI? … If the commitment is to do SEO, and if you buy it to be long-term, then SEO is a winning operation within your business,” Clay said.
2. SEO should beat the competition, not the algorithm
We need to understand how ranking algorithms work. But our job is not to beat the algorithm. Beating the algorithm is an insurmountable battle.
Google makes thousands of changes to search every year. And every keyword you try to optimize for is essentially a new algorithm.
Your job is to beat the competition.
The best we can do is determine who is ranking and determine what they are doing. Are there any common characteristics? Are there common words and can we use them better?
“The story I always tell is about two friends who go camping. They pitched their tents. They light a fire. They are cooking a meal and a bear comes. They run down the road. The bear chases them. The guy in front doesn’t need to be an Olympic runner. He just has to be faster than his friend,” Clay said.
Well, SEO is pretty much the same. You have competitors. You have to be better than them.
3. SEO done right cares about content architecture
Websites should be built in such a way that search engines see you as an expert in the field. Publishing authoritative and reliable information requires concentrated effort.
Google prefers content that is presented in a clear hierarchical structure. In other words, a scan (eg an electronics website has cameras > digital cameras; an automotive website has Ford > Mustang). This is called closure.
“It actually works better in search because you’ve concentrated, in one location, all the information about that particular keyword, rather than spreading it all over the website,” Clay said. “For SEO to work properly, you have to be the subject matter expert. You can’t throw a bunch of random stuff at a website and expect it to work.”
4. It’s not SEO’s job to make a pig fly
Sometimes, no amount of SEO can save a poorly maintained website. This is why website maintenance should be built into your SEO program.
You can’t push an “easy” button and say you want to rank tomorrow if your website looks like it’s 20 years old, hasn’t been updated in years, or isn’t mobile friendly.
“SEO’s job is to take that pig and work with you to genetically transform it into an eagle. Then you might have something that works. A lot of people come to us with old technology. They haven’t updated their site in five years . They haven’t updated the content. And they expect the search engine to reward them in front of the people who have been maintaining their sites all along,” Clay said.
Organic search competition is intense. Your competition may have an entire team working on their SEO. Sometimes it can be like trying to compete against websites armed with machine guns while you only have bows and arrows.
5. Cheap SEO is a near death experience
Cheap SEO has consequences. It can harm you. No business should expect cheap SEO to work well.
Do you want bad advice for half the price, or do you want good advice? How long will it take you to figure out what went wrong after it goes wrong? And how much will it cost you to fix it later?
What you end up with cheap SEO is inexperienced people experimenting on your behalf. And they can often be wrong.
“Do it right and do it right, the first time. You can’t afford to do it again,” Clay said.
6. SEO is done when Google stops changing things and all your competition dies
SEO is a perpetual project because search is constantly changing. Here’s what your competition is doing. (Oh, and search behavior too.)
Google’s goal is to please users, so they’ve leaned heavily on things like user experience and rewarding really expert, accurate, and reliable content.
“When you’re in an environment like this, where the search engine is constantly going to change and experiment and try to improve, those are changes that are going to seriously affect your performance in search results,” Clay said. “You can never be done with SEO. The search engines have taken care of it.”
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About the author
Danny Goodwin is the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land & SMX. In addition to writing daily about SEO, PPC and more for Search Engine Land, Goodwin also manages Search Engine Land’s list of subject matter experts. He also helps schedule our conference series, SMX – Search Marketing Expo. Prior to joining Search Engine Land, Goodwin was executive editor of Search Engine Journal, where he led editorial initiatives for the brand. He was also editor of Search Engine Watch. He has spoken at numerous major search conferences and virtual events, and has brought his expertise to bear in a wide range of publications and podcasts.
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