by Jonathon Hyjek | Aug 15, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
A sobering reminder for any SEO professional or website owner desperately trying to crack the front page of the search engines.
A staggering 75% of internet users never go past the first page when searching in Google!
The sad reminder of this fact is that if your website isn’t on the first page of Google, your website is only performing at maximum – 25% capacity in terms of it’s search engine traffic capacity. Even scarier is that the coveted page #1 position has only 10 spots available and there are thousands, hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of websites are competing for that spot. If you don’t bring your A-Game to your SEO efforts, someone else will. When that happens, you end up on page 2, 5, 18, or 72!
You might be happy being on page #2 in a Google search, but all that means is that you’re the first loser.
I’m not trying to be harsh or insensitive, but rather make your realize that “good enough” doesn’t cut it in the SEO world. You need to be on page one for as many search terms as possible and you need to work hard to stay in that position. Every day that you’re not in the number one spot, you’re losing out on potential customers and sales. Your competitor who holds the page #1 spot for your optimum keywords is essentially taking your customers from you.
Don’t just sit back and let your website be a victim of your lack of time, experience, expertise or laziness. Take charge of your SEO efforts, or let someone else take charge of them.
Your website is an investment not an expense. It should have an ROI.
If your website has only ever been an expense, you’ve been doing something wrong. A website costs money to build and maintain, but it should have a fairly tangible ROI. You should be getting leads through your website, and leads that convert to sales or clients and this is something you should be able to measure.
The difference between a poor performing website and one that bring in sales/customers/leads/prospects is a very thin line because quite often it’s not the actual website that’s the problem. It’s the website’s search engine rankings that are preventing the website from reaching out and touching your prospective clients/customers.
An SEO audit and strategy can solve this!
by Jonathon Hyjek | Aug 14, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
An SEO audit is the foundation of an SEO campaign because it gives us an understanding of the factors affecting a websites search engine rankings. Until we do an SEO audit, we can’t fully understand what we need to do in order for your website to be a success.
SEO Panic…
The usual scenario unfortunately goes like this: A company realizes that their website is under-performing in the search engine rankings so they start doing completely random activities like link building or article marketing in a flurry of activity, trying to get their website rankings to improve. It’s a panicked approach to taking action and often fails because activity apart from a strategy is an inefficient way to spend your SEO efforts and may even lead to a penalty.
A better approach is to have an SEO audit completed to get a full picture of where your website stands, the issues affecting your rankings and the solutions to improve. This method offers a more methodical approach to SEO and is a must for any company or organization serious about website rankings.
What’s included in an SEO Audit?
An SEO audit is the starting place that allows us to help you build a strategy. The SEO audit addresses many factors including:
- Keyword Research, Placement & Anchor Text
- Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools Data
- Response Codes (404, 301, 302 etc.,)
- Sitemap, Robots.txt & .htacess Analysis
- Title Tag & Meta Information review
- On-site & Off-site Content/Media Review (text, video, images)
- Website Structure & Usability
- Backlink Analysis
- Competition Comparison
- Social Media, Web2.0 & 3.0 property evaluation
- Up to 2 hours of SEO coaching to help implement recommendations
The SEO Audit is Done: Now What?
The good news is that our SEO audits don’t just tell you the issues, but they give you the solutions and actionable steps to improve your rankings. We write the report in plain, easy to understand language with steps that can either be implemented by your in-house developer or team, or you can inquire about an SEO package with Jonathon Hyjek and allow us to work to build your rankings.
To answer the question at the outset of this post: Do you need an SEO audit? For many, the answer will be YES without any hesitation.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Aug 13, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
Being on page #1 in Google is exciting. That special moment when you realize that all your SEO work has paid off and you finally make it to first place.
But is there ever a time when being #1 in Google isn’t a big deal?
I can think of a circumstance when being #1 isn’t really a big deal.
When no one is competing for your keywords!
It happens. You may have a very specific niche in a small geographic area and in order for you to rank on the first page of Google for various search terms, it isn’t very hard. Some search terms get so little search volume and have no competition that any mediocre SEO company is going to be able to get you onto page one pretty easily.
If your website falls into this category, maybe it’s time you did some keyword research. There are terms that you can rank #1 in Google for, and because there just isn’t any demand for those search terms, that being #1 isn’t going to help you much. If your search terms are legitimately so narrow that no one is competing for them, that’s one thing; But if your just trying to compete for the WRONG search terms for your business, that’s a totally different problem.
Doing keyword research means that not only do you find keywords that you want to rank for, but you find keywords that you want to rank for that actually have search volume. There’s no challenge in ranking for terms that get next to no search traffic, on the other hand it cane be pretty difficult to rank for terms that get a lot of search volume and this is when having an SEO company working for you can really pay off.
Afterall, investing your SEO efforts on ranking for keywords that no one is searching for is a complete waste of time and money.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 25, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
Fresh content is important from an SEO standpoint, so let me get that right out there at the beginning of this post. From a practical standpoint, I would suggest that it’s even more important. There’s nothing worse than going to a blog’s front page and noticing that the last time they posted was last year! There’s plenty of talk in the SEO community though about how fresh content ranks better in Google’s search results, but I don’t believe that’s entirely true.
Here’s been my experience with how content ranks in Google when talking about “freshness.”
1.) Established websites that continue to write fresh content will more easily maintain their rankings. Fresh content is like a placeholder for these websites.
Fresh content is important to keep Google interested in your website, but it’s not the only game in town either. It’s just part of the puzzle and needs to be supplemented by social media, building quality backlinks (or better yet, acquiring them because your content is great.)
2.) New websites that post content can see small increases in their search engine rankings each time they post new content. If you’re on page 4 and in spot 8, after new content is published, you may move up a few spots, or maybe even make it onto page 3 for a short time, only to slip back.
It needs to be noted that SEO is a total picture and looking at just one element isn’t healthy. Fresh content is a piece, but only ONE piece of a puzzle that includes many pieces.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 24, 2012 | Uncategorized
This is a post that you likely wouldn’t see many Search Engine Optimization & Marketing professionals writing, but honesty compels me to write it! SEO is effective and every website needs to be working on their search engine marketing/optimization strategy, but sometimes it’s necessary to back the truck up and look at more foundational business principles first.
In order for any business to market itself online or offline, the first step is to ask two basic questions. These two questions are so foundational to any business venture, that it’s nearly impossible to market in any form, without knowing the answers to them.
Who Are We?
This seems like a pretty straightforward question, but there’s more to it than you would think. When answering the “Who Are We?” question, you need to be fairly specific. Let me give you an example of what I mean. If you are a clothing store, when you answer the question of “who are we?”, what would you say? Would you say “we sell clothes?” Not likely! You would most likely say something more descriptive such as “We carry the finest quality, imported women’s fashions, at affordable prices.” This answers the question of “who are we?” much more adequately. Conveying a thorough message like this gives your customers what they need to know about your business in a nutshell.
When a company seeks to hire someone to help with SEO, the SEO company needs to know the answer to that question as well. It’s troubling though, when a business isn’t able to answer the question adequately because they’ve never taken the time to think about it and narrow it down. Part of knowing who you are as a business also involves knowing who you are not as well.
If a business doesn’t know who they are, they also have no idea who their customers are and without knowing that, all marketing efforts are fruitless. It boils down to having a laser-focused idea of who you are and who your customers are. When you know that, you won’t waste time and marketing dollars on worthless things. Small businesses are often most guilty of this because in an effort to be busy, they try to become all things to all people, instead of having a laser-focused idea of who they are and who their customers are.
What’s Our Message?
This goes hand-in-hand with the previous question. Once a business determines who they are, they are then able to determine who their customers are. Armed with this information, the next logical step is to determine what their message is. Their message is the “what” that gets communicated to their prospective customers and target market and it needs to be appropriate for the target market. The message needs to be appealing to the target market, it needs to resonate with them and it needs to call them to action. Without those elements, it’s not really a great message. A message that resonates, makes them feel good but doesn’t call them to action isn’t a great message either.
Wrapping It Up…
If you’re a small business, before reaching out to an SEO Company for help in increasing your search engine rankings, take some time to think these two questions through. Know who you are and what your message is. This information will ensure your search engine marketing & SEO strategy will see more fruitful results than just randomly spreading a bunch of links and poor quality ads around the internet hoping that something works.
