Strategize your SEO to Become the Top Ranking Site

If you visit search engine optimization forums such as Search Engine Journal, SEO Roundtable, or Webmaster World and read updates from a few selected SEO blogs, you’ll hear people complaining about Google algorithm updates.

They report their losses, some deep and hurtful. Even after getting hit with big business losses, they don’t change their approach. Nor are they learning much about what caused their rankings to fall.

What these drops and losses mean of course, is that they haven’t done enough, for a prolonged period to build the ranking strength to compete with the ranking leaders.

And other times, it’s just poor SEO. Sometimes SEO is thrown on the backs of copywriters. A copywriter/blogger has limited power to create market leadership.  It takes more than copywriting. It’s an art, science and a big project.

Professional SEO is Sturdy and Prolific

Complete, strategic SEO means you don’t have to worry about ranking updates.  You’ve got everything covered, so no matter which way Google goes, your rankings are stable. And you’ll have a wider breadth of keyword phrases too. A strong foundation makes everything better.

Rankings require time to achieve because you’re up against market leaders who have built up substantial ranking assets and strengths over time. They’ve built the foundation of lasting success.  Yes, some have big money poured into SEO. They mean business. They likely have an SEO expert working for them.

The rewards of strong search engine optimization are endless and will have a big impact on your company’s revenue, marketing mix, and even customer loyalty. You only have to do it well. Visualize the positive outcomes you need and commit to a great strategy. And of course, do start it all with a digital marketing audit.

Getting up to Speed

The best managers don’t try to win it overnight but instead build up the needed ranking assets consistently over months and years. There are plenty of ranking assets to build and it takes time research and develop them.  After a while, your brand will become a ranking asset just as it is for the top media companies.

The top visited websites get most of their traffic from Google.  Yes, wikipedia now has 1+ billion visitors per month!  That’s the power of content.

It’s a marathon, not a race, although there will be “projects” from time to time to build cornerstone ranking assets. And there’s some SEO hacking as it’s called, to test and nudge rankings up and capture new keyword segments.

Those who can’t rank well are often not competitive, persistent or aggressive enough. Do they lack strategy? Or they may not be focused on creating unique value for audiences. You must get up to speed with sufficient assets and continue to build and manage those ranking assets over time. And of course, you need to build marketing connections and do research on Google’s algorithm and become a topic authority.

If you apply your SEO strategy well over time, you will come out the big winner. Whoever wants the top rankings the most will inevitably achieve them.

 

Hard Work + Creative Imagination + Funding x time = Market Leader Success

 

Successful SEO needs a firm commitment to win. With that, your chances are slim.  Commitment really helps with focus and justifies all the things you need to do. Without commitment, there won’t be funding, there won’t be software and analytics, nor will there be creative, high quality content.

Looking for San Diego SEO services now? See what I can and will deliver for your company. Need to better understand what your need to win in your industry? See the digital marketing audit, industry best research and it’s free if you’re my client!

 

Well Planned and Continuously Applied Strategy Always Wins

Your approach to the challenge of SEO reflects your overall approach to business. Are you fly by night, or committed to a longer term business success story?

We’re all underdogs, because the market leaders have had the poise and mindfulness to create a plan to win the market. It’s the same with Google rankings and traffic, you must build and earn your success over time.

There’s some good insight into this process here in this post.

Volatility Means Weakness

There will be times when all websites will see their rankings and traffic drop due to changes in Google’s ranking algorithm. It’s never fun to see your site’s rankings drop and as a consequence see your visibility and leads reduced.

That means you can’t rest on your laurels. SEO requires a continuous effort and a winning strategy. Google’s algo is very complicated and they don’t report which ranking factors are being demoted and which are being lifted. You’re dependent on your SEO expert’s understanding and ability to respond.

Sometimes you don’t need to do anything as in a temporary algo shift. But many times, you will need to upgrade what you’re doing with SEO.

Build Trust, Authority, and User Satisfaction

Google continuously leans towards sites that meet its posted advice/criteria including using AMP, cleaning up site errors, having links from key industry authorities in your business sector, and generally having a site that is enriched with good content and being slightly corporate in nature.

Trust is a big component of the algorithm, so high quality inbound links, organized content, informative writing style, and mentions on good websites can communicate trustworthiness to Google.

Optimize What’s in Your Power and Have Faith

Even the best sites can get hit with lost rankings. There’s many reasons why, including factors you don’t control. Also your competitors can copy your efforts and thus whittle away at your unique advantage. Most of the sites that continuously rank well have a big presence online, often due to a big online marketing budget.

A big budget for online presence will generate value for your SEO campaigns and rankings if spent correctly and you have created the right collateral. Videos, whitepapers, events, big promotions and more will translate to more social shares and more links to your site. Those combined with big PPC campaigns on Facebook and Google are bound to create links and redistribution of your content on the web.

However, aside from big advertising and content budgets, there are things you can do to grow your rankings.

• informative interesting blogs – expertly written blogs on related topics can help you appeal to Google’s one answer for one question theme
• relevant news reports – news always catches people’s attention and reporting yours in an impactful way to news sites and agencies can help gain reach to your audience
• events like tradeshows, conferences, meetups, webinars, get togethers etc. — these make excellent types of content because they’re immediate, live, involve people and activities that just grabs people’s attention.
• engaging social media posts – Google does spider Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites and will find your posts with links inside and users often share them
• social media engagement – posting, commenting, sharing, liking and so one helps your posts reach more people because your post visibility is related to how many users you’re engaging with (no engagement = no visibility for your company’s social postings)
• editing and updating your aging pages and blogs – freshening up your old posts makes them more relevant to searchers today and Google will elevate your rankings
• improving your existing content — adding information, making it more strategic, optimizing for more keyword phrases, and ensuring your content adds brand value and assists with the lead nurturing funnel. It takes time to woo a prospect customer
• writing with authority, certainty, but in a helpful pleasant way (comfort zone) — so that readers are encouraged to see your company as a reliable, trusted thought leader in the industry
• important, relevant content at the top of the page (Google knows about keyword stuffing and other SEO stuff at the top of the page which ruins the visitor’s experience. It’s important to give visitors good information right away)
• excellent, fresh content – freshness is a temporary ranking factor and you’ll want to make your content valuable, interesting, and eye catching with new headings, info and photos.
• reaching influencers and news makers – these people are popular to readers however working with them can be pricey and you must have some good news and content for them to share with their audience. You can contact them, mention them, and include content that’s important to their own marketing messages, so they’ll mention you.
• being involved with universities, associations, and industry forums — where you might contribute content and therefore acquire valuable links back to your own website
• ensure your web server and website are fast responding and fast loading. Google is moving to mobile first ranking soon, with their emphasis on what they call core metrics, which are a set of technical factors about your web pages and how mobile users experience them.

200+ Ranking Factors Affect your SEO

There’s more to search engine optimization and top rankings than simply acquiring links back to your site (backlinks), yet they’re still a huge boost to your site. The more you have the more “signals” Google has to support your high rankings. Sites with fewer inbound links will find their rankings rising and falling unpredictably, as Google rotates or varies its algorithm.

You can hire professional link builders. These people produce content that is published on various relevant websites and publications.

There are other ‘link builders” who offer similar link placement services too. It’s important never to work with those who are spammers. They send out endless emails to website owners to place links or buy spots on people’s websites. You’ve likely received these emails yourself.

Spammers create links on low quality, often irrelevant websites which may lead to a ranking loss. At best, they offer no lift at all for your site, and you’ll waste $50 to $100 per link. It’s risky and generally a waste of money. Google filters out these types of link building efforts, and the links often disappear anyway. You’ll pay for nothing.

SEO Forums

A few forums provide good insight into current Google ranking issues and events including:

Seroundtable – SEOroundtable.com

Webmasterworld —  webmasterworld.com/google/

There are other blackhat SEO forums and so forth, but the types of people, topics, comments and conversations are not what you want to consume. These are largely people who want to learn tricks and tactics to scam Google. It’s not a path or influence you want. Your best approach is in offering value (great content experience) for value (high rankings and traffic). Something for nothing has a quick expiry date.

High Quality Content

SEO is a content activity. You need brilliant content whether blogs, whitepapers, case studies or videos.

It’s the best content that makes an impact with readers, keeping them on your site and returning for more. In future, your visitors engagement will be the top ranking factor.  Great content gets shared by others too. And this is where you obtain the most relevant and respected backlinks which can boost your rankings significantly if you get enough of them.

Persistent, Well Strategized Optimization

Throwing keywords into your copywriting isn’t search engine optimization. Instead, optimization is about strategy.

This means executing all the above pointers in a strategic way, with strategic presentation within a bigger topic strategy, and keeping it in readers minds more often is the way to go.

Google’s algorithm is very sophisticated, more and more able to look at content from a high level perspective. That nullifies tricks and tactics. When an SEO consultant gives you a winning gameplan, your content and website will resonate with all that Google wants, trusts and respects.

It’s high quality content presented continuously in a strategically effective way the wins the top rankings.

 

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