Effective SEO is more than ranking number one for a single phrase. We often hear people say that they have no problem finding their website when searching for it by name. That's great, but what is essential is that you have high rankings across a spectrum of search terms used by your target audience and prospective customers. This will help generate more traffic by increasing your visibility by emulating how your customers are searching for your product or service.
If you can't find your website by searching for it by name, you have a severe problem – contact us.
What is the Goal of SEO?
To increase qualified traffic to your website.
Qualified traffic means visitors that are interested in your product or service. Qualified visitors are potential buyers. This is Marketing 101 – attract qualified leads so that you can close sales.
Your website should be designed to attract local, national, or global customers who are in the awareness, consideration, or decision stage of their buying journey. Without these leads, your sales will suffer. Of course, your website should also be designed to help prospective customers in each stage of their buyer's journey. That, however, is part of the website design process.
Effective Search Engine Optimization Strategy
Cast as broad a net as is necessary to capture your target audience.
Your customer's vocabulary of keywords and phrases make up our net. You don't need gazillions of visitors to your website; you only need the right visitors.
The first step in devising a strategy is an SEO Audit. We examine everything from your web hosting account to the web server, site architecture, URL naming convention, HTML and CSS coding, how fast your site loads, who you link to and who links to you, social media presence, reviews, listings in directories, your actual content and vocabulary and how it is structured and more.
Useful and Meaningful Content
Google (and Bing) reward websites with higher rankings to those that give readers (your target customer) useful and meaningful content. Does your content satisfy your customer's search intent?
Google and other search engines use complex algorithms to determine which websites appear at the top of their search results. To increase your website's chances of ranking higher, you must engage in effective search engine optimization (SEO). This process involves creating content that satisfies your customer's search intent.
The first step towards effective SEO is understanding your target customer's search intent and crafting content that meets their needs. Use language and terms that your customer uses to describe what they seek. This will ensure that your content is relevant to their search query, making it more likely to appear at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
When we develop an SEO strategy for a client, we look for the various search terms and phrases your target consumer will likely use when searching for your product or service. Since people often use a wide range of terms and perform searches differently, we try to optimize for as many phrases that are likely to be used.
Once your customer's lexicon has been determined, we examine your website content and site architecture to see how successfully you incorporate the words and phrases used when searching for your product or service.
Editing your existing content and creating new content is typical for most of our clients. However, based on the SEO Audit, other semantic changes may be needed too. The net result (oooh… lousy pun) is useful and meaningful content for your target customer. This is precisely what Google looks for when determining how high to rank your website.
Neal Carter, a visionary internet marketing consultant with over 25 years of experience, is recognized for his profound understanding and successful implementation of SEO and web design. Since his start in the field in 1994, he has been at the forefront of online marketing innovations and strategies.
As the Digital Marketing Consultant at West Bay Web, Neal provides comprehensive internet marketing services for small and medium-sized businesses, including SEO, e-commerce, email marketing, and website design. His duties span from conducting SEO audits and strategizing SEO campaigns to performing keyword research and competitor analysis.