Crawl to the top of Search Engines with Strategic SEO Consulting
Long gone are the days where blackhat marketers reigned supreme, implementing deceitful tactics and spamming websites across the globe to manipulate search engines. In some cases, it was a simpler time back then. Before Google killed thrifty SEOs back in the day with an all-out assault of algorithm updates, savvy marketers stuffed as many keyword-rich links in footers, link farms, and blog comments achieving great success in the mighty world of search engine optimization.
What exactly is SEO marketing anyways?
Rank well –> get traffic –> sell more stuff –> support your self-sustaining economy.
While that’s a somewhat simplified explanation, the real definition of SEO isn’t too complicated. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the relevancy of your website to keywords users search for on sites like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. Search engines crawl billions of websites and serve the most relevant pages to users based on the contextual nature of queries, ensuring that the most authoritative and fresh information is highly accessible. Unlike the ads shown at the top of search results on Google and Bing, organic listings are completely free – at least in the sense that you’re not paying for each click. In essence, if your website ranks within the top three positions on Google for the keyword “best auto insurance,” you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank and booking that trip to the Bahamas (well, in a non-pandemic era, that is). However, the background process of optimizing a website may be time-consuming and require a considerable amount of resources, making it a more viable strategy for long-term growth than short-term results.
Search engine optimization also isn’t a process you can execute for a while and pause when you reach the zenith of search results; otherwise, you risk losing your position at the top of the mountain and falling faster than Jack and Jill fell down that hill.
Striving for success with SEO requires persistence and patience, as well as a vital understanding of how to utilize content to educate your target audience. The idiom “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is highly relevant when discussing SEO, mostly because a vast amount of brainpower, technical proficiency, and market research is required to sustain profitable growth.
How are Rankings Determined?
Determining which pages are most relevant for users is no easy feat, as search engines have developed proprietary algorithms that assess individual websites and pages according to over 200 factors. In addition to ensuring your content is engaging and reliable, there is a slew of technical elements on your website to optimize. Macro-level factors such as site architecture and content structure carry immense weight, as do more narrow-focused aspects such as page speed, schema code, tags within source code, etc. Beyond the art of writing intriguing content and coding with aplomb, there’s the need to increase your domain’s authoritativeness through building links back to your website. While most link building services are nebulous and likely non-compliant with search engine guidelines, there is the need to create linkable assets that will encourage web users to cite your content and source it back in the form of a backlink.
How Important is SEO, Anyways?
For the impatient, SEO may not be a suitable strategy to deliver a high ROI within the next couple of months. However, once a well-executed strategy is set into motion, reaping the benefits of months, if not, years of painstaking hard work is well worth the rewards. Think of how you behave as a digital user – how often do you use search engines to find information or products?
- Broke a tooth and need to find an emergency dentist? Search for “Emergency dentist in Montreal” and choose from the litter (local results AND regular organic results.)
- Are you thinking about planning a vacation in 2021 to North Macedonia (*hopefully*)? Let’s head over to Google and search for “places to visit in North Macedonia” to build an itinerary. Note: my fiancee loves the idea of visiting North Macedonia.
- Hmmmm….strawberry shortcake. Search for “strawberry shortcake recipes,” and you’ll find an assortment of savoury recipes waiting for you on the top of search engines.
In the end, the proliferation of mobile devices and the ubiquity of the internet has made it undeniably easy to facilitate requests for information. The saying “Just Google it” has become a popular expression, exhibiting how much the aspect of using search engines is ingrained in our everyday lives. Need more proof that SEO is a vital digital marketing strategy? Here are some stats:
- Over 3.5 billion searches are performed on Google every day.
- Organic traffic is the leading driver of revenue in various industries.
- 61% of users research a product before making a final purchasing decision.
Benefits of SEO
Cementing your spot at the top of search engines is an arduous task, but once achieved, it can provide a steady stream of inbound leads for your businesses. The main benefit of investing in SEO is capturing traffic from an inbound marketing channel that converts at a far higher rate than most digital marketing tactics. According to recent studies, inbound traffic originating from organic search tends to convert at around 14%, making it the best “bang for your buck” marketing activity once your website sites at the top of search engines. Implementing SEO may be resource-intensive in the early stages and expensive if outsourced to a specialized agency, but the long-term rewards outweigh any short-term costs. Unlike most forms of advertising, which primarily focus on passive-interest and profile targeting, search traffic is intent-driven and easily scalable once you attain first page rankings. Paying for clicks is a whole different type of investment into marketing, which can make or break your business, but relies on competing for a smaller slice of the pie with a hefty amount of search traffic going to organic listings.
A byproduct of unique content creation is generating an increased presence on the web, especially if your marketing efforts are focused on answering questions addressing top-of-funnel users. Think of informational websites like valuepenguin.com and ratehub.ca: relatively unknown brands have become mainstays in the financial realm due to the immense amount of authoritative content ranking well on search engines. Increased brand awareness and dominating SERPs with informative articles will results in retaining top of mind awareness among your target audience, reinforcing the relevancy between specific topics and your business. Mastering the challenging process of ranking your website for competitive search queries will provide you with a thorough understanding of your target audience and discover what type of content resonates best with the ideal customer.
Optimizing your website for search engines and tinkering with your website infrastructure to increase page speed will only improve your user experience, assisting with Conversion Rate Optimization. Content audits will also encourage you to update and enhance existing web pages and adorn your information with an array of multimedia assets, creating a more engaging user experience.
SEO Consulting Services
There’s a whole gamut of services that proficient search engine optimization consultants can provide, ranging from comprehensive audits and market research to active content development and technical maintenance. All of these tactics manifest to provide sound website architecture supported by authoritative content. Sounds fantastic, right?
Market Auditing & Strategy Development
Unsure of where to start when navigating SEO waters? Even the most stoic of search engine marketing professionals would be ebullient to craft the ultimate strategy. Jumping headfirst into the nebulous world of search engines without an in-depth analysis of both the competitive environment and your website would be extremely risky. An extensive audit seeks to uncover every potential opportunity available within your niche and illustrate the path to sustained success by analyzing what your competition is doing correctly. By understanding how your competition is ranking well on search engines, whether by having a diverse backlink profile or a well-oiled content generation machine, you’ll be able to reduce the guesswork to a minimum and develop a solid plan of action.
Technical Auditing & Optimization
As touched upon earlier in the page, having the technical proficiency of Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is of the utmost importance when deploying SEO strategies. While factors like page speed, crawl depth, and site architecture may seem to be rather minimal compared to building content and links, a site with a myriad of broken elements will lead to crawling issues. If Google’s pesky spiders cannot accurately make sense of your website and run into a plethora of errors, don’t expect to be in the search engine’s good graces. An in-depth technical audit will examine all of the following and more:
- Page speed/loading times and Core Web Vitals
- Language optimization for multi-national websites
- Crawl depth and indexing issues
- Schema coding
- Mobile usability
- Interlinking
- JS/CSS usage
- Server configuration
And more. The goal is to unearth as many issues blocking your path to the end of the rainbow so that you can find the lucky pot of gold.
Content Strategy & Development
As much as I loathe hearing the saying “Content is King/Queen” over and over again, the message behind the overused SEO phrase is more important than ever. Google has forced SEOs to become more creative by updating Webmaster guidelines over the years and introducing new mechanisms to gauge query intent such as RankBrain in 2015 and BERT in 2018. These algorithm updates sought to better understand search queries through artificial intelligence and natural language processing, thereby identifying the most relevant results for any question you may have.
Back in the day, it was rather simple to rank pages on an exact match keyword basis. You wanted to rank for “best pizza Montreal” in 2010? All you needed to do was create a page referencing that exact keyword multiple times within a page, utilize it in your Meta Title, and create 100 links pointing back to that page with “best pizza Montreal” in the anchor text. To thwart blackhat SEOs, Google’s refinement to query processing makes it possible for websites to rank that don’t specifically have a mention of the exact phrase “best pizza Montreal” anywhere within their page.
While the tides may have turned and forced content writers to become more creative with their projects, it remains possible to create highly engaging and authoritative content. By unearthing search market trends and understanding your target audience’s habits, you’ll be able to craft content that’s highly informative and engaging. Rather than producing 10,000 words to appease emotionless search engines, think of your ideal customer and convert your pages into money-making machines. An expert in your field is essential with E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), a page quality factor Google uses to assess the value of content accurately.
Link Building
While I won’t go into too much depth regarding the highly contentious field of link building, let me say that I’ve received enough cold emails from guest posters to last a lifetime. Traditional forms of link building have become antiquated, yet many “SEO gurus” maintain that directly buying links with keyword-rich anchor text is the path to success. The assortment of emails from guest posting ninjas seems to demonstrate that many professionals within the SEO field believe high-volume links from questionable websites are worth their weight in gold.
No, it doesn’t work like that anymore. Thank f***
Search engines have adjusted their algorithm and internal processes to identify link manipulation schemes more efficiently. In a continuously growing digital world, earning natural links and citations is becoming far more critical. Backlink profiles ripe with keyword-rich links from private blog networks, a big no-no in Google’s eyes, will unequivocally result in nothing but bad tidings for your website. The correct path to success with link building is to create a repertoire of linkable assets that will encourage readers to share with their audiences and cite as vital information in original content. Developing a comprehensive link building strategy requires a vast amount of resources. It is a significant undertaking and requires a thorough strategy mapping out a long-term roadmap. If you’re getting emails from “anna kendrick” showing her list of guest posting websites, run away!
Custom SEO Solutions
Depending on your business, your approach to SEO may take a divergent path from that of a local store or ecommerce shop. There are certain intricacies to optimizing each type of business, which is why it’s essential for SEO consultants to curate plans based on the target audience:
- Local SEO: heavy focus on optimizing local listings & developing content for every region in which your business has a physical presence.
- Ecommerce SEO: faceted navigation is essential to driving customers to the ideal landing spots based on their search query. There’s also delicate care required to optimizing category pages vs. product-level pages.
- Amazon SEO: working with an entirely different search engine provides it’s own unique challenges and nuances.
- International SEO: this is where many businesses face technical issues, where hreflang implementation errors and canonicalization problems run amok.