As spring begins to break, and with South By Southwest just around the corner, we decided to conduct a quick interview with a few SEO experts to give a quick glimpse into what is important…
An SEO Spring Cleaning…
Question 1 – What is the most important thing businesses can do to improve Search Engine Optimization?
Answer – Improve your web page title.
Example: <title>SEO Consulting Services | SearchRankings</title>
I have been saying this for years, and it is still the most powerful start to improving your Search Rankings. It is so basic and so easy to fix, I am always shocked to see how few websites use the web page title to enhance Search Rankings. Your webpage title does not need to be your company name, it should be what you want to rank for. If you change your web page title on your home page to your most important search term, it will not guarantee that you will rank in the top ten for that search term. I guarantee that if the search is NOT in your web page title, you will not be in the top ten for that search term. In the time it took you to read this paragraph you could have already changed your web page title. Just do it and see if your results don’t improve.
Question 2 – What is the most common mistake most companies make when working on Search Engine Optimization?
Answer – Failing to add new quality content to their website.
The Search Engine Optimization business has not changed nearly as much as you might think. Certainly, not as much as it has been reported to have changed over the last few years. One of the biggest changes to the business that cannot be ignored is the influence of new content on a website. The algorithm can now look for new content and use it to score your website and rank you accordingly. Writing new quality content is never easy, but it is required in order to rank for top keywords and to maintain your hard earned keywords going forward.
Bonus points if you give great content and information away to your visitors. Content includes text, videos, podcasts and infographics. All these things improve your website, provide your website visitors a better user experience and give Google the opportunity to index your website for more search terms.
Question 3 – What should a business be on the lookout for?
Answer – Monitor your backlink profile.
Link building has been and will continue to be one of the most effective strategies to improve your rankings. Link building the right way should be compared to having a really good Public Relations Agent working for you. A PR Agent’s job is to get all the great news and information out about your company. A really good link building strategy does the same thing. Good link builders both internal and external do the research and go out and acquire high quality links by telling your story to other websites. The more high quality links, the better you rank.
Backlink Profiles – Monitor the Good, Bad and the Ugly
No matter what you do, or what you have done, bad links will find a way of linking to your website. In most cases the clients we work with have more Organic Bad Links than good links. You need to audit your backlink profile in order to determine how big your backlink profile liability is. Once you determine what you backlink profile looks like you can take the necessary steps to improve it.
The Keys to a Good Backlink Profile Audit
A good backlink profile audit should tell you the following important information:
- How many good links you have, so you can determine whether you should increase your current link building strategies.
- How many bad links you have, so you can determine if you need to remediate your bad links, call publishers and ask them to remove the bad link, or in the worst case add the bad link to the Google Disavow Tool within Google Webmaster Tools.
Audit your website, your content and your backlinks, take the necessary actions, and consider your website “SEO Spring Cleaned!”
