Digital Marketing

 Overview

October,  2024

SEO is an important attribute to every aspect of your website along with material created and published in online marketing campaigns.

.The best resource to watch and understand is the Google Developers Blog. They discuss SEO in many different ways at different learning levels: from beginner to programmers. That link is at the bottom of this article.

My Website Administration article has links that are also useful in SEO.

"Keyword rankings are the most sought-after achievement in the world of search engine optimization (SEO)."
Source: Search Engine Land

 Content Best Practices

Know the standards of how to structure your web page content.  The one component that is essential to every page is a fast page loading speed.

But before you start the main purpose of all your content needs to be building the credibility of your business and encouraging interaction from website visitors. Interaction is done through Call To Action methods.

Now that you have started SEO practices, be sure you sustain fresh content. That means different things to different website administrators. But at the very least, on a monthly basis publish new content on a web page or in your blog. The search bots pay more attention to website that have fresh content that website that just sit and site form months with no changes. This is a SEO fact.

Back to how to structure your content. Use Headlines and mix the pages. The top of every web pages needs an H1 header. The other headings can vary between H2 and H4 tags. Another aspect is using images and media to attract user attention and improve readability. You know the old saying, “One picture is worth a thousand words.” Video are even more valuable plus studies show people prefer watching videos verses reading.

 Technical Best Practices

There are SEO best practices which are technical.

The three components to consider here are structured data also known as snippets, using a sitemap and lastly making sure your pages display on mobile devices with a decent presentation and that they load quickly.

STRUCTURED DATA

This is what Google Developers say about this data, “Adding structured data can enable search results that are more engaging to users and might encourage them to interact more with your website, which are called rich results.” This is a link to their video that is geared to beginners. 

SITE MAP

If your software cannot produce a map for you it’s easy to make one. Simple list your website page links in a txt file, one on a line, and save it to a file call sitemap.txt. Then upload this file into the root of your website. Be sure you index this file in the search console. Below is the image of my home made sitemap.txt file.

SEARCH CONSOLE

This is a free website resource from Google to index your website along with being able to view visitor traffic. This is a simple analytics progrma you should take advantage of but still use a “full scale” anlaytics program that I talk about in the website marketing article.

Your gmail credential will give you access into the site. The image below is what you see the first time you log in to the console. You must verify that you own the website beofre your website is displayed.

Keep in mind Yandex also has a search console that’s an excellent webmaster tool..

 Keywords

There are different locations to preform your research on this important topic.

Your goal is to find words or phrases that repress what users would type into the search engine to find your website listed as an organic result.

As an example, let’s say you have a bakery and are doing SEO for your local area. Go to a resource below and type in phrases you think people may use to find your business. It takes some give and take until you find the optimal key word or phrase. Theis research is real time so you will see hhow many searches are done using your key words. Obviously, if no one is use what you submitted as a key word, aka low volume, then you don put that as a top key word to use in your content.

Want to make it easy on yourself or employ? Just hire me, I enjoy this type of marketing research.

There are different locations to preform your research on this important topic.

Your goal is to find words or phrases that repress what users would type into the search engine to find your website listed as an organic result. As an example, let’s say you have a bakery and are doing SEO for your local area. You of to one of the resources below and type in phrases you think people may use or you estimate. It takes some give and take until you find the best key word or phrase. Want to make it easy on yourself or employ? Just hire me, I enjoy this type of marketing research.

Below are three excellent resources I use when preforming marketing research.

Google Keyword Planner: Use this tool to discover relevant keywords with local search volume and competition data.

Competitor websites: Analyze the keywords your local competitors are targeting using tools like SEMrush or SpyFu.

Keyword research tools: Utilize tools like Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz's Keyword Explorer to discover relevant local keywords.

Your keywords will be used in all segments of your online maketing.

 Common Mistakes

These are eight common mistakes website owners make with SEO.

• Mobile device optimization does not provide quality presentation due to formatting of content. This is also known as lacking a responsive design.

• Page content is not optimized: page titles, meta descriptions and incorrect header formatting.

• Broken links that occur when visitor clicks link and nothing happens.

• Images are not optimized because they are too large for a quick page load.

• Content is outdated by date published or by comparing similar data from other websites on the same topic.

• Ineffective key words in page content.

• Duplicate page content which is having similar content on more that one page which confuses search bots and gives your content a low score.

• High bounce rates which is displayed n your analytics that shows how many people leave after visiting only one page for a short period of time.

Mistakes like these are typical reasons why businesses hire me to make website repairs.

 Cost Of SEO

Before I forget, this is the Google Developer blog that i promised.

We always hear about SEO, but what is the best measurable result of SEO dollars? And what should that be worth, how much should you pay for SEO?

The first goal of any SEO effort is creating sustainable organic listings on the first page of search results (FPSR).

Search engines have tow tyes of results: local and national. Google does a great job with displaying local results on a map. Be sure that you open a free business profile with Google to have your business listed on that map. At bing you can also do a free profile.

Over the years Goole results have become skewed for one reason or another. I use Yandex when I want to see clean and clear SEO results with nay interference.

Being an organic results on FPSR, using proper SEO techniques, is a highly sought after achievement and considered a marketing success.

On a national basis, when searching for a product or service, the websites that have the optimized SEO are the ones displayed on the FPSR. Time will tell if Google introduces algorithms to manage those search results.

Always remember, SEO does not happen over night. Depending on the SEO goal, results can takes months to appear. Overall, the foundation of seeing success in SEO is finding the right chemistry in you business marketing of these three phases.

The two key questions everyone asks about SEO.

• How much is the SEO going to cost? Nearly every business today must decide how much to spend on SEO.

• Do I really need SEO, to pay for SEO, or can I do it myself? Is seearch engine marketing imperative for survival in a web-driven world?

SEO providers/agencies typically offer four main forms of services and payment:

Monthly retainer: In this model, clients pay a set fee each month in exchange for an agreed-upon array of services. The monthly retainer is the most common payment model, because it provides the greatest ROI. Monthly retainer arrangements usually include regular analytics reports, on-site content improvements, press releases, link building, keyword research, and optimization.

Contract services at fixed prices: Nearly all SEO agencies sell contract services. Often, before a client is ready to engage a monthly retainer, they will select contract services that they want to have completed. The services that an SEO agency offers are often advertised on their site, along with a price. A typical example of this is an SEO website audit which can help determine existing strengths and weaknesses in the client’s online presence, competitive analysis, as well as keywords that have the highest potential to return positive ROI.

Project-based pricing: Project fees are similar to contract services with the exception that they are custom projects created specifically for a client. Pricing varies according to the project. For example, a local cupcake shop may ask an SEO agency to help them with their local online marketing. The client decides that they want the agency to establish their social media accounts. The cupcake business and the SEO agency will decide on the scope and cost of the project.

Hourly consulting: This familiar consulting model is an hourly fee in exchange for services or information.

Most SEO agencies use all of these payment models. Likewise, clients may work with an agency using more than one model. For example, a client may choose to enter into a monthly retainer, purchase a contract service, and engage in a special project with the agency, thus entering into three of the payment models.

Monthly retainer: $2,500-5,000 per month on larger companies. To a medium size business the average cost is $1,00 to $2,500 per month. Within this range, the amount that a client pays depends on the size of their business and the extent of services provided by the agency. On the lower end of this spectrum are small SEO agencies that offer a limited range of services. On the upper range are businesses with greater needs working with full-service SEO agencies.

Contract services at fixed prices: price variable. Businesses that are just testing the waters in SEO usually choose a contract service as an entry point. Typical contract services include things like SEO copywriting ($0.15-$0.50/word), site content audit ($500-$7,500), link profile audit ($500-$7,500), and social media site setup ($500-$3,000).

Project-based pricing: price variable. Since there are a variety of projects, there is a wide range of prices. Most projects cost from $1,000 to $30,000.

Hourly consulting rate: $100-300/hr. SEO consultants, whether individuals or agencies, usually charge between $100 and $300 per hour.

SUMMARY

My intention is that you learned something to benefit your business website operations and online marketing knowledge with this article. If this content was not helpful to you, send me an email and tell me.

~ Steu Mann