Every day SEO

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could optimize your website and then not think about it again for a month or so?  It would be nice, but SEO just doesn’t work that way. Optimizing a website is like buying a new car. The minute you drive it off the lot it loses value.

On day one your site is optimized perfectly, but every single day, 365 days a year, competing sites are adding new content, such as blog posts, videos, images, and even simple updates to existing websites are added to the internet.

In response, Google and other search engines must index the new information so it is available when you conduct a search.  All this indexing reshuffles the deck.  New and more interesting content rises to the top, pushing yours lower in search.

More content is not always the answer.

For a long time, SEO experts encouraged business owners to write more and more and more. But churning out pages of drivel just won’t cut it. If you want to move up in search rankings you need to earn the spot by creating authoritative, key word rich content that can’t be found elsewhere.  That’s tough because all your competitors are trying to do the same thing.

The trick is to find a unique angle to answer the questions prospective customers have about your product or service.  You have to dig deep, but there are great rewards if you produce content only you can create.

From stories about your clients and projects to events around the office, content is a great way to give prospective customers an inside view of your company. Sharing your thoughts and opinions  help customers understand why they should buy from you and not one of your competitors.

Search engines will devour this unique information, which isn’t simply a regurgitation of something everyone else is writing about and prospective customers will love it as well.

Go Narrow to Win Big

SEO is not about winning every battle, but winning the ones which count. Pick a key word you want to rank for and search for it on Google.  Odds are there will be millions of search results returned in just a few seconds.

So out of the millions of possible pieces of data why should you be #1?  It is hard to complete on the broad search terms but you can increase the chances of landing on page one by narrowing your focus to niche keywords and specific geographic areas.

Remember 46% of search is local.  You may not win around the world, but you can dominate in your own backyard.

What do I mean by narrowing?  Instead of saying  you are a web design company, consider one of the following alternatives:

• WordPress Web Design Firm
• Indianapolis WordPress Web Design Firm
• Indianapolis Small Business WordPress Web Design Firm

By making the words more specific you may show up in fewer searches, but you will be more likely to be viable for the phrases you care about.

Speak to Human Beings

As you write content for your website, think like a customer. Use words they would use to describe your product/service.  Many years ago I worked with a client who had developed what he considered to be a “revolutionary alternative to a traditional vent damper.”

It was so different from the traditional product he didn’t want to even use the word vent damper on his web site. He wanted me to write all the copy referring to the product by its brand name.  The problem was no one was searching for his product by name. By refusing to use the word people searched for he never showed up on any search result page.

Natural language wins .  Say goodbye to stilted and forced content with your key word plugged in every few paragraphs.

People are using longer, more conversational phrases to find you. As a matter of fact, more than 50% of searchs are four words or more in length, so be conversational in your answers.

Speak to Search Engines

While search engines can read English, if you speak a little robot you can really boost your rankings.

What do I mean by speaking like a robot? I am talking about Rich Snippets, structured data markup that site operators can add to their existing HTML, which in turn allow search engines to better understand what information is contained on each web page.

So that is a little techy, and I am sure you are wondering how you make it work. If you have a WordPress website, the cool thing is that there is a plugin for everything.

The plug in we like is  Structured Content  which allows you to simply define a question and and answer and post it into your page.  (For an example look below the CTA for our Rich Snippet.  You can answer one or multiple questions, depending on your content

If you write your content to answer your human questions, then it will be easy to write  your rich snippets. 

Next Steps? Remember this will take time so commit to spending a few minutes a day updating your existing content and working on new content.