seo
A couple of days ago Google switched on a new search algorithm, new Google Hummingbird Algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the information it has when you search and come back with answers.
It was merged together with 15th anniversary of Google.
We love Google for its great search engine, for helping us finding the most relevant information, for collecting so many information globally.
I believe that Google is a great source for education, business and inspiration. It gives equal opportunity for all people with Internet access to the knowledge and information.
Yes, we are in an information age.
Recently I read a couple of post about SEO changes due to Google recent algorithm. It looks like Google finally judges the content value, brand and technical preparedness – not links, backlinks and all SEO hidden activities.
This will change the whole situation.
“Hummingbird” Algorithm
I see it very well on my own websites. It looks that natural search rules, like great content, great meta tags, alt tags and speed of website, are the most important now.
Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or meaning are taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.
I see it – my websites statistics show better data now and are more visible in natural search.
Paid Search – Google Adwords
On the other hand I noticed that Google Adwords take now 6 lines on each page and sidebar.
It looks like it is the very important change and income source for Google.
Let’s see if this recent change has impact on average conversion rate.
We managed a couple of campaigns recently for our clients and we noticed many major changes: more functions and more customization possibilities.
Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are two critical components of inbound marketing. Recently I read a few interesting articles about it. These is a summary of my findings.
The larger the organization, the more challenging it is to get approval and buy-in to build a sustainable content marketing program that will significantly move the needle in SEO
Your content marketing strategy will provide the biggest boost to your organic search visibility if you follow these four rules:
1) Know your key personas
2) Know and write to all stages of the buy cycle
3) Talk outside-in vs. inside-out
4) All write in the same direction
Know Your Key Personas
We all know how important it is to know your customers, core audience and key personas on the web. This applies directly to the content you create – especially for B2B companies – that usually have a limited content creation budget.
The clearer the picture of your personas are, the more targeted your content creation will be resulting in higher quality visitors that are closer to your ideal prospect.
Simply answer following questions:
• What are the main types of business problems the persona typically needs to solve?
• How does your product or service provide solutions to these problems?
• What are some specific tasks the searcher wants to accomplish?
• What are some sample search queries the persona might use?
• What can the site provide that will cause the searcher to accomplish this task?
• What is your business goal for the visitor? Lead gen? Newsletter sign-up? Sale? Inspiration?
• How will the searcher be motivated to complete this business goal? i.e., what’s the offer or incentive? What is the call-to-action?
With this intimate knowledge of your audience in hand, you can craft more relevant keyword and content topics.
Know and write to all stages of the buy cycle
Here are the four main stages of the buy cycle to build content for and the appropriate types of format for each:
Author: Scott Fasser, VP of Customer Experience at Optify
Talk outside-in vs. inside-out
Knowing your key words that web users use via a search engine can help you drive a new way of your brand communication as well as modifying your basic message.
SEO helps reach more customers in an inexpensive way. If you don’t like words your clients find your company via search engine, you can invest your time and money into the keywords more relevant to you. But a wiser thing is to use what you have and create different communication by using your current key words.
The lesson here it to review your current and future messaging from the point of view of a persona that does not know about your brand, focus on true differentiation/value proposition and create content that they will understand without needing an explanation. Finding that balance between pushing new concepts and terms vs. serving the market where it exists today is an important input into your content marketing planning.
Write in the Same Direction
Content creation and SEO is no longer limited to the marketing department and copywriters. Blogs, social media, press releases, video, podcasting, etc. has created many ways to easily publish content to your company and other industry related sites. Profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, SlideShare, Pinterest, Google + mean that there are MORE places to fill with content. All of this communication impacts your brand and visibility – positively or negatively.
One of the most important things you can do to amplify your content strategy is to get as many people in your organization to understand how their work can impact the SEO program and what they should to contribute. By giving them the education and the game plan for what key messaging and keywords are reinforces the central promise of your business.
Simply one voice and one direction = you are the king.
How to create a successful website – It is a common question. Every day we are being asked for helping in making it happen.
Some people think that only search engine optimization is a key for success.
Guys, it is not true.
STEP 1: Start by creating a basic road map.
This will help you in keeping the directions and your dreams together. Keep in mind that this is an evolutionary process. You can change it and modify. The most important thing is to start doing it. The visions and dreams are really important but building a great website, portal or online shop like e-bay, Amazon or onet.pl takes years. Please remember it. Evolution is the best solution at the beginning. Start small and grow big.
STEP 2: Determine what the main goal for your website is:
- informative about you, your current or future business,
- a lead generation to concrete group of clients,
- e-commerce,
- fun,
- content sharing, etc.
Each goal requires different tools, skills and investment of time, money. It can be a hybrid of many goals but please remember to start with realistic goals for you and your resources. Building some tools require a time ( 6-12 months) and money.
STEP 3: Once you choose your goals we can concentrate on designing your website:
- do you have your logo, visual identity
- what is your style – colors, behavior, clothes
- what are your clients that you have already and you would like to have
- what other websites you like and enjoy
- tools to drive traffic into your website or online shop
- and many other detailed questions
STEP 4: We present designs, layout of major pages for you, some tools:
like sliders, video or photo galleries, forms, quizzes and others that are in the scope of your initial project.
STEP 5: Development
Once you approve the designs a typical agency will start working on coding and development of your website or online shop.
STEP 6: Tools creation or configuration to help drive the right traffic to your website.
The web is a very competitive space- over 11 billion web pages, so you need to be strategic in deciding what works best for you. Some of these tools include search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization. We help in:
- newsletter configuration
- linking to most popular e-mail marketing tools like mailchimp, getresponse.com or Polish freshmail.
- setting social media: Facebook fanpage, Youtube channel, twitter, etc.
- setting web statistics
STEP 7: The time to decide how and where you’re going to spend your (limited) marketing budget.
At the beginning your website, domain is unknown. You need to start with some SEO elements:
- adding urls to most common search engines ( we can help in it)
- adding good content with key words you would like to be searched
- adding meta descriptions and alt descriptions to your pages, photos and videos
STEP 8: If you have budget, it would be good to start also:
- paid search activities to promote your website.
- adding your website to some professional catalogs
- adding your online shop to price comparison portals like ceneo.pl, nokaut.pl
- adding some offers into allegro.pl or any other partner portal
These activities depend on your main goal, budget and strategy.
Some tools work very well for online shops, some work better for websites and portals.
STEP 9: At the end what is the most important? CONTENT and CHANGES
You need to spend time to build your brand, your website, products to change it frequently. Please apply what you learn from your web metrics. These include page views, length of visits, traffic volume and trends, and you should study them to improve your site’s content, navigation and performance.
This enables you to offer a better experience to your visitors and create a successful website.
Good luck! Of course we can help:)