Developing an SEO Citrus Heights CA Strategy

The first step in Search Engine Optimization is to evaluate a website and determine what the strategy will be going forward.

#1 Evaluate the Current Website

Every website has a Domain name, and that domain name has a history, good or bad. If your domain is brand new then it has no history. The age of your domain, the trust, and authority of your domain, the size of your website, the historical content of your website, all matter in how you currently rank in search and how difficult it will be to improve your SEO ranking in the future.

#2 Evaluate the Competitive Landscape

SEO ranking in search is not done in a vacuum. Ranking happens in a competitive environment where you are attempting to rank AGAINST other websites in your business category.

#3 Evaluate the Supporting Branding (Internet footprint)

How BROAD is your branding (company name, company information) on the internet? Is your brand or website on all of the internet directories?  Is your brand or website represented on all the social media sites? Is your brand or website mentioned and linked to by other supporting websites, like associations, trade groups, partner websites?

What is SEO Benchmarking?

You have to know where you are at and where you have been, to know where you want to go…

A benchmark is simply a starting point. We must establish some points of reference for where a website currently stands. This includes on-site optimization and off-site optimization. It also includes traffic, search engine ranking, site structure, and content.

Once we know from an analytical and statistical standpoint how the website is performing we can begin to track the progress from month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, or year-to-year.

As content is added or enhancements are made to the website, we can see how it affects the SEO ranking in search engines, which give key insights into what areas to focus on the most.

SEO Targeting Your Market

SEO is the process of designing, developing and monitoring a website in order to be:

1. Indexed (found) by the automated agents that crawl the Internet
2. Ranked well in the search engines for specific desired and targeted results.

SEO starts with the foundation of proper design & development of a website including organizing site structure, optimizing site code and using targeted content.

To use an analogy it is like shooting an arrow. Once you know “what” and “where” the target is in Citrus Heights CA SEO is the process of analyzing, aiming and calculating to achieve the successful hitting of the target. For instance, if you have a website you must determine who and where your “target” audience is and then optimize the website to hit (be found) by that target market. SEO is both a science and an art form. It takes knowledge, experience, and practice to achieve results.

SEO Content and Components

1. SEO Site Structure
   1. Valid Compliant Code
   2. Clean HEAD Section
   3. Site Title
   4. Site Description
   5. Site Keywords
   6. Robots.txt file
   7. XML Site Map
   8. Canonical Link Identification
   9. Navigation – crawlable link structure, menu links, footer links, content links, no follow links, outbound links, link titles, link anchor text – Images and linking structures have a huge impact on your ranking.
   10. URL Structure, URL Keywords, static vs dynamic
   11. RSS feed

1. SEO Page Optimization
   1. Page Titles (70 char)
   2. Page Descriptions
   3. Headings (h1, h2, h3) Title and heading tags are the most important factors that can influence your search engine ranking.
   4. Tags
   5. Categories
   6. Blogs
   7. Breadcrumbs

1. SEO Content Optimization
   1. One topic per page is best with 250 to 700 words per page
   2. Images – alt text, title tag, image description
   3. On page keywords, keyword phrases, keyword research, Keyword Density is also an important factor that can influence how you rank
   4. On page text decoration – Decorations such as bold, italic and underline all have great impact over your on-page optimization.
   5. Content Length 250 to 700 words
   6. Duplicate content
   7. Design – Least important, Flash or Java of no value to SEO, Video & audio content of no value – should have an accompanying transcript if the words and phrases used are meant to be indexed by the engines.

1. Visual Design and Ease of Use
   1. First Impression – Annoying, Pleasant, Clean Layout, Music, Pop-ups
   2. Compelling Content – Too Much, Too Little, Too basic, Pages too Long
   3. Overall Appearance – Design, Layout, Dark/Light, Colors, Appeal, Backgrounds
   4. Graphics – Too Flashy, Special Effects, Balanced with Text, Logos
   5. Clear Navigation – Information Easy to Find, Organized, Menus, Links
   6. Consistency – Header, Style, Navigation, Spacing,
   7. Easy to Read – Fonts, Text Size, Spelling, Paragraphs, Headings
   8. Up to Date or Old Info – Freshness of the Site & Info
   9. Contact Info – Phone, Address, Map,
   10. Local vs. Corporate – Info that applies to target audience

Off-Site SEO Execution and Distribution

#1 Social Media Engagement and Interaction – Likes, Shares & Comments

#2 Online Directories, Citations and Branding

#3 Links, Traffic, Popularity –  Building Trust & Authority

SEO Monitoring, Management & On-Going Optimization

Many people think that you should be able to build an SEO-friendly website with optimized Search Engine-friendly content and then you are done. The site is optimized and you don’t need any ongoing SEO services. Unfortunately, the reality is that once you optimize the website, there is still much more work to be done.  Effective Search Engine Optimization is not a “once and done” project. SEO is an on-going effort to monitor ranking results and make changes over time to improve the ranking position for specific keyword phrases.

SEO Monitoring & Management

Search Engines Change – search engines are constantly changing, so your SEO strategy and implementation must change to match

Website Standards Change – Websites need to be updated periodically to meet current web standards. As time goes on, users expect clearer content, precise navigational directives, cleaner and friendlier design, more specifically focused content, and easy-to-use interactive forms and features. SEOs specialize in providing feedback on user interface and user experience, as these are factors in on-page metrics that are of increasing importance to Google’s search algorithm.

Fresh Content and Fresh Links – All website in order to compete need to have “Freshness” in both content and links. Over the past 5 years, algorithm updates by Google have shown an increasing preference for websites with fresh, original and recent material. Ongoing link building over time is a very important component of SEO – when competing with other websites with similar content, the site with the best links from quality websites will typically rank higher.

Competitors Change – Competitors may be using all the SEO tactics mentioned to enhance their websites to rank higher. Today’s top ranking for your business may not last if you don’t continue to monitor and adjust your website over time.

SEO Monitoring & Tracking

Search Engine Optimization efforts take time, results are incremental and can often take weeks or months to show the effects of the work we have done.

When changes are made to a website we watch how those changes impact and affect ranking results. If we make changes today then we track the results 30 days out, 60 days out and in some cases 90 out from the change. We evaluate the ranking for the targeted keywords, eventually aiming to have your website rank improve over time for those keywords. Monthly ranking reports help us view progress as the optimization of the website plays out over time. Tracking and Ranking reports provide a snapshot of performance so we can know how if our SEO efforts are improving the position of your website.

If ranking is not improving or upward movement has stopped we make additional changes and adjustments and again track those changes over time.