How do you prioritize your SEO efforts?
-
If you're an in-house marketing person, almost by definition, you're neither a specialist or expert in the variety of things one might do to improve SEO. We do a bunch of stuff in-house and hire people for other stuff that needs to be done and the work is never complete!
What do you do, as the de facto in-house, on-staff "expert" for SEO? I'm purposely leaving this question fairly open-ended to solicit advise, ideas & direction to develop a framework and a guide for our efforts.
Also, I'm not intentionally ruling out pro's...I'm open to your opinions too - but I will probably only hire you unless you have a full tool bag of skills that include the ability to write auto-responders, write & blog relevant content, set up and monitor page rank, do SEO, set up AdWords campaigns, etc. at a the nice price. And I'll only do that if I can't do/learn/achieve all of the above to a certain degree on my own. Although I'll probably never stop questioning processes, costs and everything else associated with hiring a pro...all of which will make me a pain-in-the-butt client you probably don't want.
Thanks!
-
By focusing on every channel for doing better SEO for all blog posts. You should do SEO of every single blog post on your website.
-
Hi!
I don't know if I got back to you or not but if you're still open to continuing this conversation I'd appreciate your help.
Thanks again for your insights, in any case.
Karl
-
Wow, what a fascinating product you work with and a very interesting website.
I took the liberty of checking out your site and found it pretty impressive. Some effort has already clearly been taken to optimize this site and provide real value to your customer, so kudos to whoever is responsible for that effort.
At a very high level - so take this with a grain of salt because I only spent a few minutes - you have great domain authority and a lot of really strong content, but it appears that you are not ranking for keywords associated with your product that you clearly should be ranking for.
I went to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and typed in "cablevey tubular drag conveyors" (the first keyword in the page title of your home page) and got a long list of great keywords associated with your industry. I went through a couple of the higher traffic ones in SEOMoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool and there's no reason why you shouldn't be ranking for these keywords based on your Domain Authority alone. It very well could be that you just haven't optimized the proper page on your site for these keywords yet, and it is possible that a little on-page optimization is all you need to start ranking well because your DA is so strong.
I am willing to go more in-depth if you want - just shoot me a private message and we can exchange contact information.
As far as a referral goes... there are many good SEO companies and individuals in the SEOMoz community who would be able to provide quality help. My recommendation would be to instantly tune out anyone who says you need link building and content - not that you don't need those things but I don't think they are your priority right now.
-
Hi EGOL,
Thanks for your detailed reply. We all need to make decisions about what we say in our marketing. I'm most interested in figuring out the form we need to follow to make sure our SEO works as well as possible. Content needs to be decided upon often and regularly to be competitive - that's an ever-changing process (for us at least!).
I am all for wearing multiple hats - it's simply a matter of prioritizing my time as I have many different venues to manage other than our site to attract, inform and generally communicate with our most likely target prospects.
The web and our sites are excellent tools to communicate - but they're not the bulk of our marketing - they're a tool. I need to learn how to use this tool better.
-
Hi Back Burner,
At the moment my goal is to understand better what I can do, train my assistant to do, and begin to define and document what I need to hire out.
I have a certain amount of time - and a lot of interest - in learning - but I have responsibility for more than SEO. That's where the prioritizing comes in.
Your comment about "full site audit first" makes a lot of sense. Because that would allow me some perspective and knowledge I need updated.
Who would do this audit? You? Someone you can refer? I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks!
-
As the in-house SEO... my jobs are....
-- know the website... know where traffic is coming from and what they do on our site, identify new keyword niches where we can compete, know where sales are taking place, work to improve conversions, use title tags not only for SEO purposes but also to pull visitors into the site instead of our competitors, develop a text and video content plan that will increase our exposure on google and youtube
-- know the products that we sell and how well they are selling, develop new traffic sources for them, identify new product lines that we can strongly compete for or that can be sold to our current traffic, understand profit margins in a way that allows me to prioritize their promotion in search and on-site
-- develop a text and video content plan that will increase our exposure on google and youtube for relevant keywords and for relevant audiences
-- continuously review different parts of our site and product lines looking for changes that might increase our rankings, increase our conversions or increase our popularity with visitors... it is easier to double your income from current traffic than it is to double you income with new traffic
The above isn't all SEO. Much of it is "webmastering" and "product marketing." But, I don't think that a person should have anything against wearing multiple hats, sitting in multiple chairs and sticking his nose into anything related to the company web.
-
Like most things in SEO, it depends. What are your business goals (lead generation, ecommerce, thought leadership, etc.)? What is the status of your current optimization efforts - i.e. has any on-page optimization, site architecture, link building, content, etc. been done? If so, how much? What is your competition doing and how does your site stack up against them?
Different sites have different goals and are at different points in the optimization process. Prioritizing your SEO efforts is going to depend heavily on where you sit currently and where you want to go.
I would advise a full site audit first to figure out what is working well and what isn't.
Actually, I take that back. First, define your goals - what do you want to accomplish with your site. Then do the audit.
Next, discover which keywords are driving traffic to your site and which ones convert the best. Then start putting together groups of keywords that are variations of your top performers and start looking for new keyword groups to target.
If you're getting a lot of traffic from what seem like good keywords but not converting, then start optimizing your site for conversions.
This is all pretty high level, but if there's one thing I've learned about SEO it's that there are no absolute answers, only problems that need solving, and there are always many ways to skin that cat.
Going through the process of identifying problems and opportunities, developing a strategy to act, and then analyzing success is a constant effort.
Deciding which problem/opportunity to attack first can only be accomplished by having a clear goal in mind.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Someone has purchased super similar domain to mine will this effect my site seo overall?
I have a domain name allready registered www.untamedelopement.co.uk and dot com. Someone despite knowing I had this name has registered untamedelopements.com (with the s) is that going to mess up my seo. I'm UK and will be targeting as my keyword Scottish Wedding Photographer and they are Canada? Thanks in advance
Moz Pro | | hemeravisuals130 -
Where do you find good SEO analysts nowadays?
We are looking for talent and having a hard time finding staff with good qualification and passion. Any suggestions or feedback would be awesome. We are located in South Florida. Thanks Antoine
Moz Pro | | adupont650 -
How to make Seo Tools Site serves ?
hello i want to add seo tools at my site for users i want my visitors able to use pagerank checker , link tracker , backlinks checker , etc - and keyword tools , domain tools , Analytics and Reporting. something like http://smallseotools.com/ what scripts i need ? can i do this all with wordpress ? Thanks 🙂
Moz Pro | | Wagdys0 -
Can I create a sterile SEOmoz login for a new SEO guy in my company?
We have just hired a new SEO guy and he wants to know what tools we have for link analysis. I would like for him to be able to use my SEOmoz tools, but i do not want him to have access to payment, billing, changes to the account, etc. Is this currently possible?
Moz Pro | | retinax0 -
Can I see when SEO Moz has crawled my website?
I would like to know if it's possible to see (maybe in my Google Analytics) if SEO Moz has crawled my website. I'm also curious if and where I can see when the robot of Google visited my website. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | Spotler0 -
SEO Moz analysing US site when I want it to analyse UK site
Hi there, I am trying to analyse the UK version of my website. However as the website is set to redirect people to the most relevant site and SEO Moz is based in the US, it is redirecting all the pages your crawling and therefore analysing US pages. So I am trying to look at the UK homepage but all the factors relate to the US site... Is there a way around this?? Thanks
Moz Pro | | MyTights1 -
Why do some of my sites stop showing up as ranking on SEO Moz (listed as not in top 50) when in google ranks they are top five?
Okay - so i have several campaigns. And of these campaigns, about four or five of them no longer show up as ranking after several weekly crawls by SEOMoz... Not sure why the line on the chart just stops when they are ranking in top 5 for google organics am confused by this can you help me do what i need to do so that the seobot can read my pages and save me time on checking where i rank - thanks Creative Guy
Moz Pro | | creativeguy0 -
What's Your Thought About Market Samurai as An SEO Tool Compared to SEOMoz?
What is your opinion about Market Samurai tool as a SEO Tool? I have used it and found it good for analyzing the top 10 competition, getting anchor text profiles and so on. SEOMoz is cool, but has a lot more features. However it lacks keyword research tool. We really cant compare the two tools in terms of pricing because the cost of the MS tool for a lifetime is what will cost SEOMoz membership for a month. What;s your take on this?
Moz Pro | | ConversionChamp0