How to Boost SEO by Optimizing Your Content on Every Web Page in this Week’s SEO Discussion

Digital Marketing Managers need to consistently create relevant high quality content in order to maintain it’s search engine rank, and each new page of content on your website needs to be optimized for search correctly.
Components involved in on page seo to optimize every page of content on a website to boost seo source - http://www.reliablesoft.net/5-on-page-seo-techniques-thatll-boost-your-rankings-checklist-included/
Recently, many SEO articles mention the end of the SEO Manager because of Google’s updates in 2013. However, I believe the new role of a SEO Manager includes optimizing new content for SEO.

Items to Optimize for All Pages of Content to Boost SEO

Keywords Phrases

  • Pick 2 to 3 keyword phrases to include in each piece of content to avoid keyword stuffing.
  • Anticipate differences in search behavior and account for them while preparing your keywords for your content.

Title Tags

  • HTML Tag – <title>.
  • Prepare a unique title tag that accurately describes the content on the page.
  • Be brief but descriptive.
  • Can include one keyword phrase.

Meta Description Tag

image of where the meta description is located for a single results on a search engine results page Source - http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

  • The subheading for this section links to a previous post about meta description tags.
  • HTML for tag – <meta name=”description=” content=”summary of content goes in meta tag”>.
  • Should be unique for each page.
  • Should summarize the content on the page and spark interest to potential readers.
  • Length should be 140 characters or less.

URL Structure

  • URL should display the words contained in the title of the page.
  • Make URL’s as simple as possible.
  • Have one URL for each page.
  • The image below is an example of what a link should look like for a web page about hosting applications.

example of what an URL should and should not look like Source - http://www.gossamer-threads.com/blog/moving-up-the-ranks-an-seo-introduction/

Navigation

  • Should be organized to help visitors quickly find the content they want.
  • Group pages with similar content into categories.
  • Navigation should feel natural to your visitors.

Components of Content on a Page

  • Easy to read and focuses on the topic of your page.
  • Unique, relevant, and helpful information for the visitors.
  • Include your 2 to 3 keyword phrases sporadically throughout the page.
  • Visitors should view your content as authoritative and trustworthy.

Anchor Text for Internal Links within Content of Page

  • The words used to link to another page should be concise and descriptive.
  • Give the reader a clear idea of where they are going.
  • Make the links easy to spot.
  • In the example below, your visitor would only see “Jon Wye’s Customer Designed Belts,” and the rest is the HTML code that is hidden.

example of anchor text code source - http://moz.com/learn/seo/anchor-text

Images & Alt Text

  • Supply Alt Text to describe the images posted on a webpage.
  • Since Google can’t interpret images, Google uses the description of your images in the Alt Text to calculate the overall rank of your web page.
  • When saving images on your website to your images folder, use file names that briefly describe the image.

Heading Tags

vimage of the different heading tags Source:http://blog.woorank.com/2013/04/how-to-use-heading-tags-for-seo/

  • Create Subheadings making it easier for readers to scan and consume your content.
  • Anything in your H1, H2, and H3 heading tags are taken into consideration when ranking your page.
  • Use Heading tags sparingly throughout page.
  • If you want to highlight text but don’t want to use a heading tag, you can bold text using <em>, <strong>, or <b> tags.

Link Building

  • Look for websites that hosts similar content.
  • Submit a request to the sites to host your link.
  • Include internal links to relevant content previously published on your website.

Social Signals via Social Media to Promote Your Content to Boost SEO

image of social signals and seo source- http://stpaulmarketingteam.com/smm/social-media-seo-and-social-signals/

  • When content is published in WordPress, it automatically posts the title of the new content to your social media networks via the Publicize feature.
  • If your website development tool does not provide this feature, you should manually post the title of your new content to all of your social media networks.
  • Place social media icons on each page for your visitors to share with their connections.
  • The more Likes, Favorites, and Reweets you receive the more Social Signals Google notices, and the higher your content can rank.
  • For Facebook and LinkedIn – If you participate in any groups, ask the group manager if you can promote your new content to the group.
  • Post new content to any other Social Media Networks where your target audience participates.
  • Visit last week’s SEO weekly discussion to learn more about using Social Media to boost your SEO efforts.

In the fight for page rank, optimize all your current and new content with the components mentioned in this blog post, and the search engines will recognize the new content.

Keep this blog post on hand to use as a checklist when preparing new web pages, and you should make sure every page of content your website publishes contains all of the items mentioned.

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SEO Weekly Topic: How to Use Social Media to Increase Your Search Ranking

Use Social Media to Increase Your SEO Source: http://www.smartonlinepros.com/using-social-media-seo-campaign/
As Google tightens it’s reins on search and link building efforts, Digital Marketing Managers and SEO Manager are looking for alternative SEO tactics to increase it’s search ranking, you can let your Social Media do the SEO work for you.

Earlier today, Social Media Examiner published 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking by Patricia Redsicker.  This article has a lot of great tips on how to use Social Media to assist your SEO efforts that I cancelled my original idea for the Digital Marker’s SEO Weekly Discussion to share this article with you.

As you gear up your social media efforts to help your SEO strategies, just remember to participate in social media networks where your target audience is located. Don’t waste your time with social media networks where your target audience does not participate.

Having a hard time convincing your boss to try social media?

Discuss Stephanie Frasco‘s 6 Reasons Social Media Is Critical To Your SEO at Social Media Today

  • Link building was always about social proofing
  • Social media allows you to crowd source your link building
  • Being social is the fastest way to multiply your presence online
  • Social signals is a real think
  • Social links bring real traffic to your website
  • Google hates link building

Now, that you have convinced your boss to pursue social media to promote your brand, you can focus executing your social media efforts to boost your SEO with some best practices.

Patricia Redsicker Shares 5 Social Media Best Practices to Increase Your Search Ranking

  1. Publish High-Quality Content – As always content is key to drive your SEO and Social Media success. After producing content that meets your target audiences needs, you can post your content in a multiple areas of the web including your website, your social media networks, your newsletters, and your blog.
  2. Make Social Sharing Easy – Produce content that your target audience wants to share.  For example, I saw the 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking article, and I immediately wanted to share it with you.  As you produce content, you will have alter the content based on platform where the content is posted. Quick example, if you write a blog post, you can’t post the entire blog post on Twitter, but you can type the title of your blog post with a link to your blog.  With this example, you have basically the same content shared on two different platforms with the additional benefits of SEO finding the content.
  3. Boost Your Images and Profiles – We are a visual society, and visuals help us comprehend the written word.  Therefore, we need to use images.  First, save image files using your keywords. Next, when using images for your content, write an Alt Text tag that describes the image using your keywords for search engines.
  4. Don’t Forget Authorship Metadata (Google+) – Post your content to Google+ and indicate you are the author of your content.
  5. Measure Social Media Performance – As with SEO, it is critical to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. Develop KPI’s and dashboards to demonstrate how your social media not only increased traffic to your site, but you should create reports showing how your social media helped increase your SEO search rank. Then, you need to develop reports how your social media and SEO efforts increased revenue.

While this blog post shows the importance of using social media to increase your search rank, take your time to read 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking and devise a plan on how to effectively use your social media to increase your search ranking.

Additional Resources on How to Use Social Media to Increase Your Search Ranking:

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SEO Mondays: Improve your Google Rank by Implementing 7 Link Building Strategies

7 Link Building StrategiesKeyword strategies get the most attention for SEO, but link building is another SEO strategy that Digital Marketing Managers can utilize to increase website rankings on search engine results pages. Today’s SEO Monday blog post talks about 7 link building strategies.

7 Link Building Strategies:

  1. Manual Link Building
  2. Competitive Link Building
  3. Links via Embedded Content
  4. Linkbait & Viral Campaigns
  5. Content, Technology & API Licensing
  6. Partnerships, Exchanges & Trades
  7. Link Reclamation

Whatever link building strategy you decide to employ, just keep in mind that you should create relevant links for your content to increase the trust with your customers and search engines. The more relevant your links, the higher the quality of your links, the more value search engines will place on your content, and ultimately, the higher you will rank on search engine result pages.

Before starting your link building strategies, create a profile of websites and social media sites where your target audience spends time. Then, think about how you can build links from those sites to you site.

7 Link Building Strategies Details

1. Manual Link Building
Create a list of relevant non-competitive sites and pages, and then, make a request for a link with the website. Try to find an actual person who manages the site to make a request for displaying your link. This form of link-building is the most time consuming, but it produces high quality links.

2. Competitive Link Building
Complete a search of places where your competitor has links and see if you can post links on those same pages. Examples of where you and your competitor might both have links include industry directories or associations. This process doesn’t produce links with the highest quality, but it isn’t time-consuming like the Manual Link Building Strategy.

3. Links via Embedded Content
By offering widgets and embeddable forms of content, you can earn links back to the page of your choice when other websites include your work in blog posts, articles, or webpages. For example, you can use scribd.com to upload one of your PowerPoint presentations and embed a mini graphic of the PowerPoint on your website. When someone clicks on the graphic, scribd.com earns a link. This link building activity is not time consuming and produces high quality links.

4. Linkbait & Viral Campaigns
Find industry bloggers or content hobbyists that offer relevant content to your website where you both have similar audiences. Contact these individuals and ask them to post your content on their site with a link back to your site. It may take time to develop relationships with industry bloggers and hobbyists, but if both of you share each others content, you can build high quality links.

5. Content, Technology & API Licensing
With this strategy, you syndicate your content or create licenses with other websites to post your content.  Then, who ever distributes your content produces a link back to your site. Producing these types of links my take time, but once the relationship is formed the opportunities for building high quality links is limitless.

6. Partnerships, Exchanges & Trades
These types of links include reciprocal links, discounts, or invitations to events.  To maintain the quality of these links, don’t sell links. Building these types of links can be simple as long as both parties are happy, but the quality isn’t as high.

7. Link Reclamation
Find all potential broken links, out-of-date resources, and 404 pages, and then, redirect them back to your homepage. While this takes time, this strategy produces high quality links. Plus, this strategy is just good practice and can help build a relationship with customers.

Good luck utilizing one or many of the above link building strategies. Just remember to build relevant links for your content. For every link you build, ask yourself if the link feels natural or not.  If the link doesn’t feel natural rethink the link.

Additional Link Building Strategies listed from hard to easy to implement

Strategies in the above graphic are list from hardest to easiest to implement. However, think about implementing a combination of these strategies to reap all the benefits for your websites SEO. The source of the graphic is from Brands Exposed.

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough