SEO: Forget Keywords. Think Topics

 Search engine optimization (SEO) keeps evolving. It’s still about showing up in search, making your website more visible to those who are looking for the solutions that you provide. But the techniques to improve your rankings have changed, and it has to do with those notorious algorithms that are constantly on the move. Search engines have grown more sophisticated; they’re now using updated algorithms and practices to determine the contextual meaning behind keyword-based searches.

Search engines exist to solve your problems . . . 

And they’re getting much better at predicting what you want. The old days of randomly filling up a page with keywords is over—search engines recognize this for what it is—shameless keyword stuffing. Good content is nonnegotiable. In order to rank you, search engines look for title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure and inbound links. Also figuring in are navigation structure and site design–these are things we can easily execute ourselves. 

Build your SEO strategy around topics, not keywords

Keywords should feel natural, not forced, but your focus should be on the intent of your audience. Build your SEO strategy around topics, not keywords. If you do that, you’ll be naturally optimizing for keywords. For example, if you’re writing about planning a wedding, you don’t need to list every single wedding detail—champagne, catering, food, cake, flowers, photographer, music and all the other details. Google, in all of its wisdom, knows this. It understands the topic of wedding planning.

It’s not just about your website; building backlinks

Search engines work on your overall web presence, and backlinks are an important component. Any link from someone else’s website to yours (or any other site) is a backlink. Backlinks help Google find new pages on your site faster, and they’re associated with increased credibility and trust. 

How to build backlinks? Look for opportunities to be a guest blogger and include a link back to your website. Links should be from websites and content that are relevant to your focus. A really easy way to build links is to post your blogs to your Google Business Page. You can post a blog excerpt with a Learn More button and link back to your website. Easy. 

Your social channels are an important part of your SEO value 

Social can have a big impact on your organic search. Think about what goes on with our social activity—sharing posts, tweeting and retweeting. It could be through a Facebook friend, Twitter follower, a connection through another social network or something totally unrelated. Sometimes social search will even prioritize content that has been shared by an influencer. 

Our challenge is creating search experience optimization. We want users to not only find our websites but to stay there, drill down through our content and come back later and become a customer.

Does an SEO analysis and upgrade of your website need to be part of your marketing strategy? Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and digital marketing specialists. 

Nine Easy Ways to Increase Website Traffic

Optimizing your website doesn’t have to be hard. With a little discipline and adherence to ongoing maintenance procedures, you can create an overarching strategy that will help increase your web traffic. 

1. Build an internal linking strategy. Creating links among related topics and pages encourages users to stay on your site and drill down. 
2. Keyword research. Research helps you identify the keywords that appeal to your target audience. There is a number of tools from which to choose. Ubersuggest is very easy to use, and there are third-party applications that come with a pricetag. I like Google’s Keyword Planner because it’s free, comprehensive, and it aligns with Google products. You’ll need to create an AdWords account and a gmail address. 
3. Improve loading speed. We’re an impatient group. Go to Google PageSpeed, key in your website’s url and check your load time. The violators may be your images. They should be in the 1500-2500 pixel range. I generally go for the lower end of this range. I often see people with beasty images that are 5000 pixels. Put these on a diet and your load speed will dramatically increase.
4. Page titles. Keep them short and concise. Google truncates anything more than 70 characters. Big tip: Populate your page title with those keywords for which you want to rank.
5. Identify keyword focus and write metadescriptions for each page. A metadescription should accurately summarize the page’s content. Use keywords and think about the value visitors are getting from your site. 
6. Use alt tags. Alt tags are text fields that you see when you upload images to your site. If an image doesn’t load, the viewer will see the description and understand what the image is contributing to the story. 
7. Check for broken links. It’s frustrating to click on a link and get a 404 error. If the page is no longer available, remove the link. 
8. Identify duplicate content. Bots look for content and index it. When there is duplication, they get confused and can’t identify the best result. The result is a stalemate. If you want to repeat something—which we often do—identify one home, then link to that content.
9. Optimizing for mobile is no longer optional. More than 70% of users are now accessing everything on their phones. Your site should be built in responsive design so that everything adapts. Implications for mobile users:
10. Small screens call for larger text.
11. All content should auto-adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed. No scrolling or manipulating the screen to see the website.
12. A navigation menu with lots of drilldown can be annoying on a mobile device. It takes time for new screens to load, so scrolling can be more efficient. It may require your rethinking your navigation. A simpler schematic with more scrolling may be appropriate.

A new year is the perfect motivation to optimize and update your website presence! Contact me at Top of Mind Marketing. Writers and content marketing specialists.

Is This the Year You’ll Finally Update Your Website?

Who besides me has promised that 2021 is the year you will finally create a new website? If so, focus on a simple, stable, mobile-friendly design. Think about your navigation; grouping information so users easily can find what they’re looking for.

Easy ways to add videos to your website

Thanks to YouTube, more than 75% of people now are using videos in their marketing. Videos are a great way to promote a new product, introduce a new member of your team or explain a process that can be confusing. One of my clients is rebranding, and we’re doing YouTube advertising using animated explainer and whiteboard videos. These 60-second animated videos have been very successful–our YouTube campaign has doubled our website traffic. I write the scripts and generally map out storyboards before handing these off to our vendor for development. This campaign is proving to be effective and affordable.

For a quick video fix, I’ve been using an application called Promo.com to make short little promotional videos. It’s easy to use—insert images, choose music, add some text, save and upload. They’re snappy and fun.

Forget sales pages; include informational pages

Build some informational pages where you answer questions that customers might have. FAQs have fallen from favor, but I think they’re staging a comeback. They’re most effective if you focus on answering very specific questions. 

Remember that SEO starts with words

Website optimization is based on keywords—the optimal word here is “words”. You have to have words to let Google do its job. I’m a writer, so I always advocate for more good content for landing pages. Will users read these? Maybe not. But content does two things—it helps with SEO and it provides important information about your products/services. Remember to frontload the content on your pages—the most important information belongs in the first few paragraphs. 

Building backlinks has become an important part of an SEO strategy

Backlinks include Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, including LinkedIn’s business page, and/or business directories. Google views links from external sites like a vote of confidence. Ask influencers—those who are well-known and respected in their industry with large social media followings–to recommend you in their posts, blogs, etc. This will drive traffic to your site. Influencer marketing in its purest forms involves a budget and paying for these referrals and links, but I’m doing a more modest form of this for one of my nonprofit clients. We’re working with some of our power partners to reference each other in our blogs and social posts. 

Install Google Analytics to track user response

Install Google Analytics so you can start tracking the effectiveness of your efforts. Be patient—it takes some time for Google to start indexing information on your new website. Benefits are cumulative; the longer a campaigns runs, the more benefits you will see. 

A lockdown and a new year—the perfect motivation to update your website presence! Contact me at Top of Mind Marketing. Writers and content marketing specialists.