Developing an SEO Hereford, TX Strategy

The first step in Search Engine Optimization Hereford, TX 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 The age of your domain, the trust, and authority of your domain, the size of your website, the historical content of your website, all matter in how you currently rank in search and how difficult it will be to improve your SEO ranking in the future.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 results 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?

5 steps to get your website on page one of the search results

Step 1 - Find the right SEO Hereford, TX keywords and build a keyword list

Step 2 - Prioritize the SEO keywords for improvement

• Keyword Queries that have search volume and are generating search traffic
• Keyword Queries that have business value (Profit Centers)
• Keyword Queries that don't have SERP features above the organic listings
• Long-tail Keyword Queries that are lower in competition

Step 3 - Find out why you are being outranked

Ranking Factors to Watch

Search Intent is the most important ranking factor

• The reason behind the searcher's query
• Google tries to provide the most relevant results for any given query.
• Make sure your content matches the reason why people are searching

Identifying Search Intent Google the Keyword you want to improve on your own site Analyze the top-ranking pages

The 3 c's of search intent

Content-Type

• Blog Posts
• Product Pages
• Category Pages
• Landing Pages

Content Format (blog posts & Landing pages)

• How-to's
• Step-by-Step Tutorials
• Lists (top 10)
• Opinion Pieces
• Tool or Calculator

Content Angle

• Unique selling proposition
• Unique "hook" or call to action that entices a searcher to click on your result

Check the # of referring domains pointing to the top pages

Check the results that are outranking your site for your keyword. Get enough links to be competitive with the results that are above you.

Page-Level Authority

Google's algorithm is based on something called page rank. It basically measures the overall strength (quality and quantity) of any page's backlink profile which is translated into "authority". Page rank still plays a role in the algorithm despite the fact that they discontinued public page rank in 2016. They may no longer show the public the rank or authority of a page but they still are measuring it. In general pages with a higher page rank will rank better and get more organic traffic. Internal links within a site also create page-level authority.

Website Authority or Domain Authority

Some SEO professionals will tell you that there is no "domain level" authority, but while Google doesn't call it that they have said that they do have several ranking factors that "map into similar things" at the domain level. In other words, Google does look at the overall domain which includes the entire website and includes things like the total number of keywords that it ranks for, the age of the domain, and the consistency of the content. Google tends to favor sites with overall high domain authority.

Step 4 - Beat the other websites in the search results

Research the competitive landscape and identify "problems" that may contribute to why you are not ranking higher rather than what we call "ranking factors". Evaluate each competitor's content, external links, internal links, and other factors that are ranking higher for your keywords.

Step 5 - Track your rankings

If you want to improve your ranking then you will need to know where you are at and watch the impact of optimizations you are making. Track rankings over time and note when you made changes so you can see if they have had a positive effect.