SEO Blog

“Hello, I’m not sure if you’re they guys I need to talk to but I have a problem…”

Somebody has an emergency. Their business is in trouble and they know they need help. Since they are calling us with a big problem this is likely the first point of contact our agency has had with the caller. They almost certainly should have called sooner…

“My website was getting lots of traffic and making sales but in the past couple of weeks, all that has dried up. What should I do?”

Search engine optimization and marketing firms get this type of phone call every day. Somebody has invested a lot of money (relatively speaking, of course) and probably a lot of time into his or her online business and now they have an issue. Most of the time, the caller didn’t know who to speak with about their problem until it hit a critical point. Often, they didn’t even know they had a problem until their disaster struck. When it did, they would have turned to a friend or business associate that then referred them to us. Such is the extended marketing cycle for a well known search marketing shop.

(Article originally published in WebProNews as part of a ten-part expert article series on SEO. An episode of Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM also covered points in this article)

Content Is King

Content is king. More than a truism, the phrase is a mantra. Content is the stuff people are looking for on a website. A commitment to developing and deploying great page, document and site content is a commitment to good SEO.

Comprised of the most common site elements, content is the most effective tool SEOs have to work with. Loosely defined as All Things On-Page, the term “content” would include titles, tags, text, in-site links and out-bound links. In some SEO practices, the acronym ATOP is used to refer to the hands-on work environment. (ATOP, i.e.: Mark sends the keyword targets to Jade whose staff works ATOP in the overall SEO effort) Content optimization is where creative art gets mixed into the webmaster science of SEO.

In the SEO process, content optimization describes most of the hands-on work done to make unique documents place well in search engine rankings. For the purposes of search engine optimization; content either exists, has to be created, or both.

Over the past three months, my WebmasterRadio.FM show Webcology and WebProNews have run a joint series of radio shows with corresponding articles on the ten basic steps or stages shared by most effective SEO campaigns. Today, we cover the last section (but certainly not final points) in a round-up article aptly named, “Keeping It Up”.

If the initial object of search engine optimization is to attract website traffic, the long-term objectives are to retain and convert that traffic and new traffic into repeating business. As all analytic webmasters know, the bulk of site traffic tends to come from search engine referrals. Retaining strong search rankings is essential to sustaining strong traffic, increasing sales and thus expanding your business.

Even after a website has established itself with its visitors and has a strong conversion record, search engines will continue to provide the vast majority of all new site traffic. If the SEO has done his or her work properly, blogs, social media and paid-search ads should also be driving new and repeat visitors.

Overt the past three months, we have been running a ten part series covering the basic steps in search engine optimization and marketing on our radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm and WebProNews.com. After twelve weeks (two of which were preempted by conferences), today marks the final episode in the series.

I am very proud of the series and the accomplishment. Our goal was to combine ten 1-hour radio shows with companion articles published in the Expert Article section of WebProNews to flush out the ten major phases of an effective search marketing campaign. To cover such a broad topic, we enlisted the help of some of our friends.

Here are links to each article and radio show in chronological order along with the name of the expert author.

1/ Keyword Research :: Article by Dave Davies :: WebmasterRadio show (Jan. 31, 2008)

2/ Competitor Analysis :: Article by Ross Dunn :: WebmasterRadio Show (Feb. 7, 2008)

3/ Site Structure :: Article by Daryl Quenet :: WebmasterRadio Show (Feb. 14, 2008)

4/ Content Optimization :: Article by Jim Hedger :: WebmasterRadio Show (Feb. 21, 2008)

5/ Link Building :: Article by Debra Mastaler :: WebmasterRadio Show (Mar. 6, 2008)