How to estimate and refresh Your SEO Strategy

 If there’s one thing that’s a steady when it comes to SEO, it’s that things are always altering. Ten years ago, a good way to get your site ranked at the top of the search results was to stuff your page full of keywords and then hide them by making their color match the page’s setting. Try that nowadays and you’ll be penalized in the search results.

If you’re optimizing a newly-created website, changes to SEO tactics and strategies shouldn’t be amazing you have to worry about, because today’s SEO best practices revolve around one, some concept: quality. Awesomeness is most likely a better term for it, actually.

In 2012, Google complete over 500 updates to its search algorithm. Is it about time you evaluated where your website’s online existence stands? Here’s how to initiate your SEO estimate and overhaul your strategy.

Check Your Inbound Links

There was a time when all that mattered about inbound links was how many your website had. The more links you had, the better your rankings were. To compete in this surroundings, companies figured out particularly scalable link spam strategies, blasting forums and blogs with nonsense to create links. Link wheels became all the rage, as did link networks and link farms.

Sadly, these tactics perpetuated and permeated the industry because they worked.

But the folks at Google aren’t stupid. They caught on to these scams and started punishing websites that engaged in these tactics, while rewarding the websites that had legitimately-acquired, quality and reliable inbound links.

 Check Your Website from a Technical SEO viewpoint

Once you’ve recognized and removed or disavowed your spammy inbound links, it’s time to look at your website from a technical view. Consider these questions:

1.    Is it crawlable by search engines?

 2.    Is the content prepared logically and helpfully?

3.    Does it load rapidly?

4.    Are the title and meta tags unique and present on every page of your website?

5.    Do you have both an HTML and an XML sitemap?

6.    Are there any crawl errors or alerts showing in Google Webmaster Tools?

There are a number of other basics to check as well.

Estimate Your Content Strategy

If you have any question as to how significant content is to your website’s search rankings, So, how do you engage in a content strategy? The answer isn’t simple or short, so here are some great articles that explain, in-depth, how to get started:

Overhauling your content strategy doesn’t mean you should simply write up a bunch of new blog posts and line up them up for publishing. While that can be beneficial, start by taking some time to review what you already have on your site. When looking over your content, ask yourself the following questions:

Is my content well written?

Start with the basics. Spelling and grammar count; Not only with the search engines, but with your readers. Your content is a mirror image of your brand; and professional brands don’t make mistakes at such a basic level.

Lastly, content should be written with your object audience in mind. Make it easily readable by chunking it up into sections, and use subheaders to introduce each section. Content that looks intimidating won’t be read or shared.

Is my content purposefully segmented?

Look at your product and/or service pages. Do you have one only one page that lists all your gifts? If so, you’re likely missing out on many opportunities to rank well.

Each product or service should have its own page optimized for the keywords connected to it, along with a specific call to action.

Integrate Your Social Media Strategy

Once you’ve initiated your content marketing strategy, it’s significant to leverage social media channels to maximize your reach, build your audience, and set up your brand within your market. If you don’t yet have a social media marketing strategy, it’s time to get one .Investment in social media will become a requirement, not a luxury.

You’re going to need a robust social media marketing strategy to build:

•    Brand awareness

•    Authority

•    Trust

•    Conversion rate

•    Social signals

•    Website traffic

•    Inbound links

Conclusion

Going back to Matt Cutts video, these basics aren’t the only ones that Google uses to calculate search engine rankings, but they stand for the bulk of the algorithm.

you might also like: SEO For 2014