At the heart of this accomplishment lie two things which are related to one another:

1. A focus on uncovering user intent, and then filling that need
2. The ability (and budget) to do all that’s necessary

This may sound easy, but when you consult with a business that is stratified and compartmentalized into watertight departments and divisions, this presents many challenges.

Part 1: Managing SEO Activities

The first half of this success story involves the approach I took in terms of strategy and implementation. With competition getting tougher by the year and the rules of the game constantly changing, putting together an SEO strategy that won’t quickly become obsolete is important.

A. Critically Evaluate The Situation

There have been major changes at Google over the past year or so. With local business search, maps have taken over the SERPs. More users are on mobile devices, with GPS and location data impacting results. Searches for people are more often dominated by authoritative social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Yet, despite all these new developments, many of which have made the competition even tougher than before, SEO budgets remain the same.

To be effective, I had to think differently. My client sites already had large volumes of traffic, but tracking visitor counts without studying Web analytics led to an illusion of being in control — when really, they weren’t. I determined that it wasn’t just about getting more traffic. I had to get the right kind of visitors — people who would buy!

I had to adjust my strategy by stepping back to ask critical questions:

• Where is Google headed?
• Where will Web search be in the next few months? Or years?
• What could I expect to blow up or become important?

B. Identify Trends You Can Leverage

By answering the questions above — and by digging deep into all available data, analyzing patterns, and studying clients’ current SEO practices — I came to several important conclusions:

1. Relevant Is No Longer Good Enough

People are on Google looking for answers. If search results don’t provide them, users will go elsewhere. Google wants to become the best “answer engine,” so it’s no longer good enough to provide a page of content that is “relevant” to a given keyword. If you’re not answering the searcher’s question, you won’t last long in the top spot.

2. Identity Is Important

Google wants to determine searchers’ identities and interests. It also wants to know who authors specific content, and how trustworthy and authoritative they are.

3. Sites Must Get Attention By Standing Out Amid The Noise

Rich snippets and authorship are affecting SERPs. It will soon become much harder to compete and win away attention from those who make use of these tools — even if you have the top spot and they don’t.

4. Online Is Global, Not Local

Products and services that are available for purchase online are less likely to show up in local search results. Traditional SEO campaigns are still necessary.

5. Personal Signals Are Critical

Google considers geo-location and GPS data while serving up answers to search queries and tailors results to your location. Additionally, people’s voices count for more, and social search is gaining importance.

C. Chart Out Your Strategy

Based on these insights, I took a step back to work on our strategy. Rather than rigging up advanced SEO tools and running complex audits right away, I had to draft an overall plan that was “evergreen” (or, at least, one that would survive for 12 to 24 months!).

So, what was the common factor among the insights above? What can you really do that will not become obsolete as the Web changes?

Simple. You find the user intent behind web search – and build your strategy around that.

It’s an old marketing cliche that guys who buy drills don’t want an instrument — they really want the hole. Realizing how this relates to SEO work will become your biggest “a-ha” moment.

When Matt Cutts says one should focus on the user, you should listen. Google’s attempts to simulate a human brain’s thought processes mandates that we move away from technical SEO and quick-fixes and move toward understanding user intent.

D. Uncover User Intent

I’ve written previously about SEOnomics, the complex interaction between human psychology, SEO and business economics. Every expert SEO consultant applies this approach to get inside the head of a client’s typical customer, understand their deepest needs and desires, and then weave this information into a winning SEO strategy that delivers great value. You can begin to figure out user intent by asking the following questions:

• What do your customers want?
• What are their biggest problems?
• How are they affected by these problems?
• What are the solutions they seek?
• How badly do they need a solution?
• What are they willing to pay for it?

The answers lie hidden within your analytics data. Web analytics are more than just a traffic counter. They unmask secret needs, intentions and expectations that drive prospective customers to a website. Keywords tell you what problems visitors have and what they are looking for to solve them. Searchers often want answers or more information. They are looking for assistance or reviews.

Web analytics can also reveal what they do after arriving at the website. What actions do they take? What path do they follow? What content is of interest? A talented SEO can even use analytics data to predict what will sell, what visitors want, and what they will do on the site.

All this analysis provides precious insight into consumer intent. It can serve as your guide to giving users a great on-site experience. It will let your business solve their problems and convince them to spend money on your products and services. Knowing what’s going on in your ideal prospect’s mind, you are now ready to take action.

E. Think, Act, Measure & Then Act Again

Build smaller, focused, iterative processes rather than big and time-consuming ones. Whenever a change we made was successful, we did more of that. If it wasn’t as effective as we expected, we did less of it — or even stopped doing it. This may not sound revolutionary or exciting, but was one of the most important ingredients of our SEO success in 2012. These were our insights from using this strategy:

• Things change rapidly online. You must adapt fast. Yes, strategy matters. But a tactical focus and the freedom to respond quickly to changes will ensure faster deployment in your e-commerce store.
• Before you act, slow down enough to make sure you are working on the right things. Taking time to step back and evaluate is not a sign of weakness, but of strength.
• Don’t spend money on anything that is not measurable. Any important variable is measurable. Measure everything — but only include actionable data on your list of things to review.
• Focus on strategic and economic goals. Remove everything that’s merely “nice to have,” because it will only distract or confuse.

Result: 113.29% Increase In Generic Search Traffic.

Part 2: Managing the Client

If you’re working with smaller business clients, this process is relatively simple and straightforward. But as the size of your client business grows, so do the problems. You’ll have to interact with more people, sell them on the value what you do, and then get them to buy in to your strategy, allot you an adequate budget, and stay out of your hair until you get things done!

Unless you get this right, you’ll waste most of your time on internal squabbles and power struggles, answering to several bosses, and fighting budget cuts. Not surprisingly, such a situation leads to having less time to focus on implementing your SEO strategy, resulting in a poor performance.

And then, everybody will blame you!

Here’s how I get around such problems, following a set approach that you, too, can adopt profitably.

A. Position Yourself To Win Trust

For a marketing manager in a large organization, SEO is just a tool. The business owner or CEO may not even be aware of your role as an SEO consultant. It’s difficult to get in a position to talk with the right people.

But that’s because you’ve not demonstrated your true value.

Here’s how you can do it: stick to simple, vivid descriptions. Saying “Google is responsible for xx% of your online revenue” will be very effective. “Google” may not mean much to a corporate executive — until he knows it brings 50% of the business’ online revenue.

Once he is aware of this, he’ll see you in a different light! He’ll come to you. He’ll depend on you. And for SEO consultants and internal marketing managers alike, this is a nice position to be in.

B. Keep Things Simple

For board meetings, I simplify my data into easily understood presentations. If someone unfamiliar with SEO makes investment decisions about SEO campaigns, you must provide your intermediary with simplified information that can be conveyed quickly and effectively — and ensures that you get the budget you require.

Extract the most critical financial data (not SEO terms or ranking data) and present this as a one-page document. With the aid of a designer, I made an infographic that the e-commerce manager could display in the office. Everyone understood it. It spoke for itself.

C. Never Justify

Most clients just want your conclusions. Not your rationale. Or arguments.

Build trust – then trust your customer to trust you. If you don’t succeed at this, keep trying… because without trust, you are doomed. You’ll waste time trying to convince your client, or defending your budget – instead of growing your client’s business.

D. Work Together

“If you need to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Don’t be the “SEO geek” — adopt a “business development” mindset. Work hard to get close to your client. Involve your employees in various processes. Your task is to make everyone understand how important SEO is for the company. Show department heads that you are helping them deliver on their own sales results and growth.

Once I started reporting my results in terms of revenue rather than traffic, more people understood what I was talking about — “10 million unique visitors” is not as meaningful as “$2 million in profit.” Everyone understands money. Cash is king!

E. Get Clarity Before You Begin

Ask why. Ask often. Don’t begin anything before you understand why you’re doing it. Then (and only then), figure out how best to do it.

Ensure that web analytics and business goals are aligned. Measure the right data. Verify that it can be acted upon. Make a dashboard in Google Analytics (or other web analytics tool) and share it with everyone. Buy a screen and place it in your office where everyone can see.

• How much money did we make from Google today?
• Are we on target?

This screen motivates people and spotlights the impact of SEO on revenue. For one of my clients, Google accounted for 60% of revenue. Demonstrating this visually was very powerful.

Takeaways & Lessons

1. Keyword research and analysis matters, but the user intention behind those search terms is crucial. Optimize your site for people, not search engines.
2. Your SEO toolbox and the mix of your tools still means a lot. No single tool can tell you everything you need to know. In my own toolbox, I always have the Google Keyword Tool, Market Samurai, Search Metrics, SEOmoz Pro, Mozcast, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Open Site Explorer and Microsoft Excel. For project management and collaboration, we use Jira.
3. Keep things simple so that it is easy to explain your process to clients. Getting them to buy in to your strategy and winning their trust early on can be crucial to the success or failure of your SEO work, especially when you work with bigger businesses.
4. Strive for constant improvement. Listen to real experts to constantly refine your process.

Image via Crestock.com under license

Having spent over ten years as an SEO consultant, I’ve gathered a list of “top ten challenges” (or, as I think of them, my pet peeves) about the industry and our clients.

I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences to share with our community. I’ll go first, and list out 10 things that challenge and push SEO consultants to come up with their very best efforts.

1.  Fascination With Quick Fixes

Our clients, normally savvy business owners, are strangely driven by the urge for “quick fixes” in their SEO. Even though they understand the complexity of SEO and the potential benefits from getting it right, many just want a quick win.

My clients are evaluated on their quarterly or annual results. Even though my convincing pitch with fact-based reasoning demonstrates that they will double revenue from organic search by taking a long-term approach and working on a 24- to 36-month timetable, I still see resistance. They don’t like this. They want faster results. They prefer 12 month horizons.

Often, I’ll get anxious client emails before board meetings. They’ll break down our organic traffic goal into a 12-monthly figure, get pretty graphs drawn, and then discover (to their dismay) that the traffic we’re receiving is nowhere near what we “agreed upon at our initial discussion.”

Businesses should understand that organic search is important, and it cannot be rushed. Quick fixes may deliver quick wins, but it is unreal to expect them to be sustained and long-lasting.

2.  ”But My Competition Does…”

One of the toughest questions I’ve had to field begins with, “My competitors are doing _____ , so why can’t I?”

Many sites ignore Google’s guidelines and exploit loopholes in the search giant’s algorithms. They indulge in practices like shady link-building, exact match domains, ranking on duplicate content, and so on. In the near term, sometimes, these techniques help them outrank other businesses.

As an SEO consultant, I get frustrated at hearing Google’s never-ending string of (rarely implemented) rosy promises and dire threats to discourage webmasters against such practices.

In Norway, we have 5 million citizens. That isn’t many. But when I’m responsible for SEO strategy at some of the biggest, highest-traffic sites in the country, I am frequently left red-faced at Google’s lack of effective responses to such under-handed and crooked tricks to game search rankings. My personal opinion is that Google isn’t quite good at filtering out low-quality content in Norway. Even when I report poor-quality sites, nothing happens.

There are times when I even feel sorry for my clients. Their competitors have been using tricky techniques for years, and yet nobody stops them or penalizes them for such actions. They make a lot of money through their shenanigans. On the other hand, my clients are practicing ethical and white-hat SEO, adopting best practices and respecting guidelines, only to find themselves outranked by low-quality sites. It’s frustrating for SEO consultants. Have you ever felt the same, or had similar experiences?

3.  The Conundrum of “Hourly Rates”

So, I’m called to bid on an SEO consulting project. I make a presentation, hand over my proposal… and a few days or weeks later, my prospective client will call to complain that my hourly rate is too high. They love everything else about my proposal, but try to negotiate a lesser rate, saying that my competitors claim they can do it at a lower price.

Well, that’s true. They can. And it’s because they have a different approach and attitude toward SEO. Instead, wouldn’t it be nice when clients look at how much more money I’m going to add to their bottom-line? At how quickly I can help them achieve their financial goals and targets? At how effectively I can help them grow their business?

Look, a good SEO consultant is so much more than just a technical specialist. A great SEO consultant is excellent with analytics. Armed with access to valuable data, a consultant can help with your business development needs, guiding you grow your business in new ways. It is meaningless to evaluate such value by “hourly rates,” yet we see it all the time. How do you deal with it?

4.  SEO Cannot Compensate For A Poor Product

SEO can’t fix everything. I know that’s contrary to industry-driven myths, but hey! If your product, service or customer care are mediocre or just not “awesome,” you should fix that first before you call in the SEO guy (or gal) to get you more traffic.

SEO can amplify your business results. If you have a great offer which adds value to people, SEO will help you expand your reach and help many more people while making a bigger profit.

5.  Learn To Say “No” More Often

I should follow my own advice! Sometimes I get a bad feeling when a prospective client calls for a meeting. Maybe he wants to switch agencies for the 3rd time in 2 years. He isn’t happy with his present SEO vendor, or recently had a confrontation, and so, wants to change consultants.

I’ve often found that these clients are impatient, frustrated, and difficult to work with. Any trivial thing can affect their behavior and attitude toward their SEO consultant. A sleepless night, a bad quarter, a rough review by their boss, and they’ll impulsively leap to random conclusions, second-guessing your judgment, and blaming everyone but themselves.

It’s a bad situation to be in, as a consultant. Such a client’s attitude can drain your motivation and mess up your mood. You have to promptly break off these relationships. Say “No” when you see it coming. Cry “Stop” when it begins with an existing client.

Yes, you may lose an account. But it’s still the right decision. Keeping on “energy vampires” as clients can have devastating consequences on the rest of your consulting business.

6.  An Obsession Over Hit-Counters

People love “hit counters.” Ok, maybe hit counters isn’t the right way to describe this. But, many clients still place disproportionate emphasis on page views, search rankings and other such low-quality KPIs (key performance indicators).

None of these correctly reflect your business’ performance. You need to focus on the right KPIs. Ones that are actionable, and which contribute directly to bottom-line profitability. Those are the ones you seek to improve through your SEO strategy.

In many clients’ eyes, ranking is still king. But, SEO consultants understand that a site’s placement in the SERPs is only a rung in the ladder to business success. Without an acceptable conversion rate, more sales and higher profit as a consequence, even a #1 ranking on Google will be worthless.

7.  SEO Is Still Icing On The Cake

A few business owners cherish a naive belief in the ability of SEO to transform everything and magically create results. So, they put off consulting an SEO expert until everything else is ready with their website development.

Unfortunately, when this poorly planned and constructed site generates sub-optimal results, fixing it will need expensive changes. It’s far better to involve an SEO consultant right from the planning phase so that all aspects of your commercial website will work in harmony and synchronize with other elements to deliver stellar results.

8.  IT Consultants Can Fix Everything

It still amazes me that my family will call whenever they have trouble with their printer, PC, mobile phone, scanner, or have a virus problem — just because I’m an “IT Consultant.” Sometimes, they’ll even call for help with their TV, cable connection, or satellite dish!

It’s the same story at work, too. Clients don’t see a difference between a Web designer, Web developer, paid search expert, or SEO consultant. They figure that “If you’re an IT manager, you should be able to fix everything that runs on electricity.” Well, that’s not how it works!

9.  ”Content Is Easy”

Sorry, it’s not. Unless all you need is to fill in some white space with text and stuff it with keywords.

Time and again, I hear clients saying they can handle content by themselves. I no longer go into raptures of delight when clients say they have a “good copywriter or writer on their staff.” Rarely, if ever, do those writers have a good understanding of SEO.

Whenever I’ve relied on these “inside experts,” I’ve been disappointed and ended up having to teach them how to do what’s needed. That also cuts into my SEO budget, wasting time that’s better spent on other SEO tasks. Does this sound familiar?

10.  Getting Paid Per Link

When the SEO discussion turns to link building, the issue of buying links crops up. In the aftermath of Google’s Penguin update, it’s weird to even hear that businesses dare buy links from people offering “pay per link” deals.

This is risky, and I always turn down such requests from clients. But, some still go ahead with shady or black-hat link building techniques, and then blame SEO consultants when the ax falls on their business’ head.

So there. These are my pet peeves about being an SEO consultant. I’m sure there are many others you’ve faced in your career. Please go on and share them in the comments below. Let’s get some discussion going on these vexing problems and talk about how to solve them.

That approach works well in general practice because most common ailments can be cured by rest and sleep alone. If only SEO problems can be solved just as easily, everyone would want to become an SEO consultant! The truth is, effective SEO needs a CT Scan, not just a Band-aid.

Unfortunately, many clients come to SEO specialists like myself for more complex problems.

• Their websites don’t rank well on Google
• They don’t get a steady stream of qualified prospects to visit their sites
• Their offers are not appealing to the right audience
• The conversion rate on their sales website is low

And, they are looking to SEO as the answer to their ardent prayers that things will improve.

Diagnosis Before Prescription

In modern medicine, a doctor who prescribes a medicine before running suitable tests to identify the underlying disease would be sued for malpractice. Sadly, when it comes to SEO services, we don’t stick to a similar standard of care.

Image via Crestock.com under license

Unless an SEO consultant can dig deep into your business realities, get to the heart of your business and identify areas of weakness or potential opportunity to be exploited, your SEO efforts will underperform their potential. The ship that is your business will run adrift on the high seas, get further and further away from safe harbors and lose direction, only to wander around aimlessly.

It is critically important for you, in consultation with your SEO advisor, to be able to get inside your prospect’s mind.

• Find out what they are looking for
• Recognize the needs and desires that fuel their search for your services and products
• Identify the keywords and phrases they type into search engines, and the intent behind those searches

Only then will you be able to tailor your response to match their requirements.

How To Buy SEO Services

As an SEO provider, selling SEO services is very different from other kinds of selling. Landing a new contract isn’t the ultimate goal. And, desperately lowering prices to appeal to first-time clients may be the wrong strategic choice. What is more important is to attract the most suitable clients whom you will be able to help significantly through optimizing their SEO.

Education marketing is highly effective, and co-opetition makes it easier by informing prospective clients about the benefits and advantages of SEO in their business. Still, there are multiple factors at play. Synergies exist between different elements. The ‘butterfly effect’ leads to unintended consequences for every item that you tweak or modify. And, each client has unique challenges, both internal and external.

Without knowing what the internal and external challenges are, a consultant or agency will not be able to say for sure if:

• you will benefit from SEO at all
• how much you will pay for SEO services
• what kind of impact you can expect

An Ounce Of Analysis Is Worth A Pound Of Repair

When SEO consultants invest a few hours to examine your business, learn about your business’ financial and strategic goals, and understand the ecosystem in which your business operates; then they will be able to offer a more accurate prediction of how SEO services will help — and make you a better, more realistic offer.

There is no “one size fits all” package when it comes to SEO. Every case is unique and different. Trying to speed up the process and rushing to provide quick-fixes add little value, while you risk losing focus and direction. First, take the time to diagnose what’s wrong — and only then begin your SEO treatment!

Why?

Because fans and experts alike blamed him for leaving their star striker Lionel Messi on the bench! It proved a deadly — and costly — strategic mistake.

But… What has that got to do with SEO? Surprisingly, a lot.

Refine Your SEO Strategy

SEO specialists are often forced into a similar strategy — and leave their winning play-makers on the bench. With new tactics cropping up every day, it’s easy to overlook the importance of traditional on-site SEO, and lose focus on what works.

It irritates many SEO consultants when clients clamor for the “newest, latest, coolest” techniques. There’s nothing wrong per se with using cutting edge tactics to dominate search results, but often these demands come at the cost of tested, proven methods that are effective!

That’s why it’s worth taking the time to work through this checklist, and make sure that you’re getting these SEO fundamentals right.

1.  Retain Your Focus on Revenue and Profit

Image via Crestock.com under license

For any online business, revenue matters — as does profit. On-site SEO was never more important in generating both. Use it to target your market on a granular, individual level.

Social media marketing has become ubiquitous, and its synergy with SEO can be remarkably powerful.

But, that doesn’t mean social media is a substitute for all other forms of traditional SEO. Neither does article marketing always take a back-seat to audience building.

Blog authorship won’t replace link building in an attempt to stay on top of Google’s ever-changing algorithms. Anything that boosts revenue and profit is worth trying and improving.

2.  Beware The Lure of Shiny New Things

Everything you publish online is indexed. Your customers find your content on search engines, and what they see influences buying decisions. Organic search results deliver bottom-line results to every business. That’s why you shouldn’t put SEO fundamentals on the back-burner while you chase after new untested techniques.

3.  Your SEO Strategy Is Constantly Changing

The playing field is always shifting. Google ranks websites on the basis of nearly 200 factors. The algorithm changes every day, 500 to 600 times each year. So your SEO strategy must keep on evolving, adapting, improving.

Image via Crestock.com under license

Social media, client communication and other marketing technologies are vital to any campaign. But I don’t see every new arrival as a substitute to what already works.

“New SEO” is a myth. A distraction. It leads to a dilution in focus. Your winning strategy must embrace novel methods, and incorporate them into your overall marketing mix.

It’s dangerous to under-estimate the importance of social media for marketing. That’s why many SEO consultants are working hard to master the use of social networks. Social media is profitable. It should be an integral part of your marketing campaigns.

The secret is to line up everything together correctly, and not to blindly slash budgets from other areas of marketing and SEO to focus exclusively on social media.

4.  Embrace the ‘New’, But Keep What’s Working

Exciting new developments and technologies offer opportunities to grow your customer base and boost revenue. But many business owners blindly hop aboard bandwagons, dumping “old, traditional stuff” to fall in love with “cool” marketing techniques.

That’s not wise strategy. Neither is blindly layering newer models over existing approaches. Getting the balance right is critical.

5.  Focus, Focus, Focus

You must try to create order from chaos. Having a knee-jerk reaction every time Google tweaks an algorithm, or Facebook adds a feature, or Twitter launches a tool can make it appear as if your SEO efforts lack a cohesive strategy.

Just as you don’t learn to shoot by stepping into a gallery and firing at random, your SEO and marketing campaigns must be pointed right at your biggest goals.

6.  Are All Your Marketing Eggs In An SEO Basket?

They shouldn’t be! Though one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing, SEO isn’t a universal solution. That’s why you must create a diversified arsenal of marketing weapons to win the war against your competition for more targeted traffic.

Along with social media, email marketing, customer relationship building and loyalty programs, SEO can help you communicate better and collaborate more effectively with buyers, partners, investors, journalists and other stakeholders.

7.  Information Architecture Isn’t Just Cosmetic

It’s also structural.

Good SEO improves your information architecture and website/URL structure. Using a well structured content layout, you can leverage synergies within your network. If your budget is limited, you’re better off using it to strengthen your base. On-site SEO will serve like reliable bedrock for your Web business.

8.  Better Structure Leads To More Inbound Links

Not only does good website architecture win you deeper links, it also boosts your chances of being linked to, tweeted, or mentioned on forum posts about that topic, such as a “Top 10 Wall stickers” list, for instance.

By getting deep links to the right place with your ideal target keywords in the anchor text, you’ll secure the highest SEO advantage for your website and content.

9. Reel In Search Engines With The Perfect Bait

By ranking a URL when people search for [Wall stickers], you’ll help search engines deliver a good user experience. Ensure that the context is right, and that only related pages are linked from inside the silo and you’ll enhance content relevance within the silo.

This adds value to each section of your site, without having them compete internally for search results. Crawling and indexing by search spiders also happens very smoothly.

10.  Get Deep, Powerful Links

With a strong, well-planned information architecture, you can attract powerful deep links. Take a furniture store, for example. Many bloggers write about home interiors. Your ideal customers read their blogs, follow their tweets, and share their recommendations on Facebook. These bloggers will happily link to relevant internal page content on your site – because it adds value to their audience.

11.  Organize Your Content

Do this in a way that you’ll leverage social networks to boost your SEO. Instead of dropping all your material into the root directory of your website, you can set up a category for [interiors], with sub-categories for niche divisions within it.

This way it’s easier for bloggers to link directly to your /interior/wallstickers/ URL, making it more valuable for their readers. On-site SEO strengthens and adds value to your social activities. It gives your marketing campaign longevity and greater effectiveness. You become more interesting, linkable, shareable and likeable to your prospects, bloggers, journalists and partners.

Remember To Focus On SEO Fundamentals

Integrating your diverse marketing efforts together will help you carve out a larger slice of your niche market, and let you enjoy the revenue boost that will follow naturally. This becomes easy when you focus on the basics, and adopt proven SEO fundamentals that have passed the acid test of time.

Edgy marketing is exciting, but risky. Conventional approaches are relatively boring, but rewarding.

You can benefit from both. Just make sure you don’t lose focus. If you do, you’ll lose control.

By analyzing the process, the methodology and the sequence of involving SEO in business development, I hope to showcase the role that search engine optimization has, even in the context of frequent algorithm changes at Google and other engines, proving there will always be financial justification for SEO.

A Quick Look At Recent Shifts

It’s very likely that 2012 is the year many SEOs will look back upon as the Dark Days of their specialty. Online ecosystems changed dramatically. Reputations plummeted; shenanigans were exposed and punished; and worse, even perfectly white-hat techniques and tactics seemed to get penalized at random.

No one could understand what was happening or why.

This trend looks all set to continue (even accelerating) in the years to come. And so, it has become important to try and predict where Google is most likely to be in 2015. Quick fixes are doomed. Sure, they will help you scramble back up briefly. But in the long run, that simply won’t be enough.

It has never been more important to gaze into your crystal ball and visualize the future! There are still many good reasons to invest in SEO.

The Coming Humanness Of Technology

Google’s brilliant engineers are looking for ways to make their algorithms “think like people.” And that’s why any SEO strategy that looks to the past for learning lessons is destined to fail miserably.

The changes that are coming are irreversible, and transformational.

But this doesn’t mean we can ignore the past completely. Historical search volumes and trends continue to tell us a lot about demand. Human beings are creatures of habit. People have been consistent in their behavior, attitudes and desires — for decades, even centuries. By observing trends since 2004 in evergreen niches, you can reliably predict what’s coming… ahead of time.

And that will guide your content marketing strategy.

SEO Data Is Powerful

The role of content marketing isn’t merely to publish more content, but to attract real business to your company through it. A content production calendar that serves the predictable demand of your market will have an impact for many years to come. And that’s where tying in technology to human nature creates explosive results.

But, many business owners underestimate the value of SEO data and fail to analyze it thoroughly. SEO is no longer a cost — it is an investment. There’s a fountain of knowledge hidden within search data that can help you uncover lucrative niches and tap into areas of high demand. When you map the needs of your market and target whatever your audience already wants, you will be able to:

• Seize new opportunities
• Run effective campaigns
• Spot rich niches with high-profit potential
• Launch new products or services successfully

The data can also help limit your risk while entering new markets and segments by identifying areas of low demand, or extremely high competition.

How Can SEO Give Your Business An Edge?

The trouble, however, is that business owners carry a very different perception about SEO. Many believe in the myth and misinformation about SEO being only about consultants selling first-page rankings, building large collections of links, or fixing title tags and inserting the right keywords into their content.

That’s not what SEO is any longer. It has evolved. So what will the future look like?

I predict that audience building and Author Rank will become important elements of an SEO campaign.

Content marketing that ensures a larger reach (more readers), deeper impact (solving problems by matching visitor intent), and greater longevity (your business remains evergreen) can only be rooted in a better understanding of SEO data.

Small businesses are well-positioned to turn around quickly and incorporate changes swiftly. This speed can help new players reach market domination overnight, even with limited budgets.

A week invested in writing a great article after first researching and analyzing search volumes, trends and competition, going through Web analytics to find the best keywords that convert well, and running Adwords tests to compare conversion rates among different keywords, will practically guarantee incredible results from your content marketing.

When that article is also informative (without being a sales pitch), adopts the right tone of voice for your specific readers, offers solutions to their biggest problems (through correctly anticipating visitor intent), and delivers value while simultaneously ranking well on an authority domain in your niche, it will:

• Attract your ideal prospects in droves
• Get you more followers on social networks like Twitter and Google+
• Brand you as the go-to-guy for their needs

That’s how smart SEO can become your biggest business planning advantage in the shaky, uncertain Google-universe of 2013 and beyond — a scary, nerve-wracking environment where the tactically-minded SEO consultant of yesteryear will fade away, leaving only strategic, future-oriented experts as The Last Man Standing!

Image credits: Crestock.com

This article will probe and provoke – with the intention of saving you time and adding value, as it delivers an important message –  that even if you’re great at SEO, coding, communication or any other area, that by itself isn’t enough to help your business (or clients) survive and thrive over the long term.

Not The Icing, But The Cake!

Effective SEO and PR firms know that successful SEO tactics (like planting a good article on authority sites) are not the icing on a cake that’s added right at the end of an SEO campaign. They are aware that it’s an important essential ingredient that needs to be mixed in with others right from the beginning, before you even put the cake into the oven to bake!

That’s because SEO that works today and will be future-proof tomorrow is centered around “audience building”. Not just buying packages that build links, get shares and offer similar ‘solutions’.

Those tactics will end up limiting business opportunities because the technology and methods used to get higher rankings will indirectly affect more desirable actions – like shopping, decision making, and generating trust.

This matters especially at the tender developmental stage of your marketing campaign when you’re competing against companies pitching the same prospective clients, aiming to guide what journalists, bloggers and opinion leaders say about you.

It’s important because it influences what many others read, think and do – such as make a buying decision, spread the message further among their circles and networks, write about it, link to it, mention it on social networks and more. One ‘sneezer’ can reach a huge audience through their network.

Dancing To Google’s Tune – Now Optional

In the past, whenever Google snapped its fingers, SEOs jumped, adopted quick fix solutions, and tried to scramble back to the top.

Today, extremely frequent tweaks to the algorithm make it harder to beat these changes consistently. Soon, we’ll have to bypass these ‘quick fix’ SEO tactics altogether and focus on whatpeople need.

Coincidentally, that’s what Google (and any other search marketing service) wants, too. Better value for their users.

If you fail at this, your search marketing will grow extremely expensive because your “secondary objectives” risk becoming obsolete all of a sudden because of an algorithm adjustment.

Sadly, some companies are mis-reading the signals to infer that links are this year’s ‘quick fix’ and turning to services that promise affordable link building. Sure, links are an important ranking signal today – but that could change. Also, buying SEO services that focus exclusively on links and ignore your brand and longevity is unwise strategically.

An opportunity is lost to create and reap synergies when strategic SEO is done properly and effectively.

Strategic SEO Is More Effective

Planning a strategic SEO campaign doesn’t have to be more expensive. And even if it is, the results make it worth the extra investment. Wouldn’t you agree that paying more to get to your business goals faster and more cost efficiently is worth doing?

A truly strategic long-term SEO plan will integrate a company’s overall objectives into each step. A purely tactical approach is the equivalent, in today’s competitive battlefield, of going to war with your guns firing blanks!

Winning the war becomes costly, time consuming, and messy. The alternative of investing a bigger budget to load your marketing arsenal with powerful weapons reveals your commitment to a quick and decisive fight, in a more humane and cost effective manner, minimizing losses and casualties.

That doesn’t mean you must waste hours and hours writing blogs, building linking profiles, or chasing content exchanges, which is like going on a fishing expedition for more visitors of doubtful quality and value to your business. You can use marketing that’s as effective as a laser-guided smart missile, targeting only your ideal prospects and never missing its mark.

One strike, bang on target, and your mission is accomplished!

This style of search marketing is efficient and impressive, building respect and authority in the marketplace. But… how to accomplish this effect?

The Power Of Distributed Content

A regular column or guest blog at an authority site in your niche can serve this purpose well. You save time and effort, maybe even money, by going where your market is. You’re sending your audience clear message with a deliberate intent. “I’m an expert. I’m the best. You can trust me.”

And trust you they will – because you are featured on the highest profile website in your niche.

Your presence will impress and attract head hunters looking for qualified people to hire. Companies you may find impossible to contact on your own suddenly become more accessible. Influential people reach out to network with you.

When prospects research your fledgling company, they will find your name mentioned on the top industry resources online – and that gives you an unbeatable advantage over your competition.

In addition, when you dominate the SERPs for business critical keywords, you more or less control people who are in the research process – your prospective clients, journalists, bloggers or opinion leaders, who in turn will influence others.

A single high quality contribution to the right site can help you dominate your market for years. Third party recommendations or positive mentions will influence decisions far better than self-serving advertising can ever hope to. You don’t even need to own the properties that are marketing you, or struggle to sell anything directly. It all happens sub-subliminally, automatically, naturally.

The Future Of SEO Is Strategy

Yet most businesses are tactical in their approach, placing undue emphasis on tools and techniques. Bullets don’t win a war. Neither does a formidable arsenal of machine guns, tanks and Apache helicopters. What’s more important is the right intelligence, planning and the experts to co-ordinate, measure and act.

Winning, then, becomes a strategic effort. If you won’t win the war fighting the enemy out in the streets, then take it to the negotiating table – or courtroom. Your victory may be achieved through political intrigue, or a well-timed military offensive. You don’t care which strike creates the breakthrough… as long as it works.

You could spend hours soliciting speaking engagements locally, blogging, commenting on other blogs hoping for back links, engage on discussion forums, all with the hope of ranking on some target keywords for a short period of time. Or you could take a step back, plan your strategy, and then make your move.

Your article, published on top industry sites like Search Engine Land, or on top sites in your own industry, will seal your position as an expert.

Maybe all you’ll get in return is one back link from the “About Author” text. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about something bigger. Your article at an authority site can do much more for you and your business than even improving the ranking of your site. Your name and brand recognition, coupled with the longevity of this impact, make it well worth taking the time and effort to consistently make good contributions that deliver outstanding value.

Each individual marketing effort – branding, SEO, social marketing, sales – is effective by itself, and explosive in combination. Just like mixing together various antibiotics or medicines can eliminate the most resistant infection, your multi-pronged search marketing strategy will break down barriers and rocket you to the top.

All of these efforts are directed, not at “link building”, but at people and audience building.

SEO Is About Reaching & Impacting People

As Google evolves, we must evolve in our SEO approach too. Without bringing more relevance and value to its users, Google’s economy is doomed. That’s what strategic SEO should aim for.

Over the coming months and into 2013, I predict the following will happen (call it my SEO weather forecast!):

1.  Link Building Will Change

Traditional ‘budget’ link building that’s obsessed with link numbers, Page Rank and such conventional “recommendations” will shift to creating value-focused content and activities. I think we will see more guest posting, and columnists working hard at different business models, rather than SEOs selling “packages” with xx do follow links from blog comments, forum profiles, article marketing, social bookmarking and more.

2.  Audience Building Will Dominate

This will become the equivalent of e-mail list building, but for services which influence the people engaged in a buying and decision-making cycle.

3.  Social Voting Will Gain Traction

Likes in the SERPS which we see in Google+, Twitter, Facebook and other social media or networks.

4.  Greater ‘Outward’ Focus

Less emphasis on “me”, less desire to “own everything”, meaning less effort to publish everything on our own sites and greater willingness to publish on authority sites.

By working hard, delivering on your promises over time, and being seen as trustworthy, you can use authority sites to:

• Reach your audience when it matters.
• Build more trust. Being published on an authority resource like Forbes.com and thereby ranked in the SERPS, you can achieve something even more important – your “Agent Rank”, brand and authority will go through the roof! Forget about conventional SEO here. No more keyword stuffing. Just a laser focus on reaching your audience – not the search engine bots.
• While growing your Google+ (or other) presence, you’re automatically building an audience that will find your articles through Google organic search more easily, because they’re already following you on Google+. This is a “high speed highway” to get onto their radar. Whenever your ideal prospects search on business critical keywords and phrases, you’ll achieve good rankings and be prominent through the use of “rel author”, images and more.

5.  SEO Copywriting Will Be Impact-Oriented

We will see more SEO Copywriters who’ll write less content, and be measured not on ‘rankings’ but on the combination of ‘impact’ and ‘social influence’ and ‘search metrics’; not on simple counts of tweets, ‘Likes’ and others, but on tracking how the message affected target audiences and how they reacted to it.

• Did they share the message with their followers?
• Did the link go viral?
• Did it attract new users to the business or brand?

Making an investment into crafting quality content (even if you only publish infrequently) can boost your company’s name recognition beyond compare. Journalists who use search and social media for their research will be influenced by it, and may feature it in a story that’s published on another domain – one with a newer, broader, bigger audience of people.

Crafting quality content takes time and resources. Experts may need weeks to come up with top-notch content – and there’s no guarantee that it will work, that your audience will feel it is good enough to get them to follow you, share the link, tweet it to their own audience, or eventually give you access to their personal “closed” network and friends who trust the “influencer”.

But when the pay-off comes through, it can transform your business magically. That’s the real power of strategic SEO, and I forecast it becoming very popular in the near future!

Image credit: Crestock.com

Enter SEO.

Search Engine Optimization helps with this ‘findability’ problem. SEO can ensure that your business ranks high on search engines, attracts the right customers, showcases your value, and boosts profits continuously.

No Business Can Ignore SEO

Your prospects use the Web to research purchases. When a health-conscious family makes decisions worth $10,000 over the next 5 years based on information from a Google search, you need to be ‘discovered’ by that family – and millions like them in your market.

I conceived the term ‘SEOnomics‘ to meld SEO with economics, a process of maximizing profits and generating big business successes through SEO. Effective SEO interweaves technical elements of website optimization with buyer psychology to match a company’s objectives to the online environment.

Before formulating your strategy, ask yourself these questions:

• Where are your customers on the Web?
• How can they be reached effectively?
• What is the least expensive way to impact them?
• Which areas can be leveraged for synergy?
• Which ‘tools’ are best? How to use them?

With a strategy harnessed to website architecture optimized for high search engine ranking, your business will be super effective in boosting sales and profits – if it has one more important element…

Understanding Visitor Intent

SEO can steer a business through rough economic seas, staying profitable despite recessions and downturns, if it is rooted in a deep understanding of visitor intent.

Knowing what your prospective customers want helps you deliver solutions they’ll happily purchase. SEO specialists get inside the mind of your typical customers, understand their desires, and craft a winning SEO strategy designed to capture their attention, nurture it into trust, and grow it into loyalty. Your prospect becomes a customer, then a repeat buyer, and ultimately a referrer and evangelist for your brand and business.

In this way, an intelligent SEO strategy will:

• boost sales and bottom-line profit
• reduce marketing expenses by enhancing effectiveness
• increase insight and understanding into your clientele’s needs
• leverage synergies with other marketing efforts.

SEO Targets ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ For Rapid Profitability

SEO is cost-effective in growing businesses. Many are content with a 2% sales conversion – or less. This means 98% of their marketing is wasteful! SEO can fix that by convincing non-buyers, targeting them at the point of sale.

According to Power Retail, 86% of in-store buyers conduct online searches before purchasing, and 80% rely on this information to make a decision. Even in B2B purchases, 52% of buyers surveyed admitted to researching purchases online. Effective SEO fills the needs of these website visitors and converts many into buyers.

SEO Is More Than A Traffic Machine – It’s A Conversion Crusher!

Tailoring your website to match what is in your prospect’s mind will speak straight to their deepest desires. Your SEO plan should target keywords, yet be powered by buyer psychology, understand buying cycles, and factor in the customer research process.

With this, you’ll skyrocket your sales conversion. Using powerful software tools to pick the right keywords is important. The transformative element, though, is tracking your customer’s behavior to learn what they want. This eliminates guesswork and can turbocharge your sales at low cost.

SEO Can Tell You Why Visitors Don’t Buy

SEO isn’t just about code – it’s about people.

If your business serves a huge market but your visitors aren’t buying, SEO can help you understand why – and show how to mirror their needs better. By creating laser focused landing pages which focus on the issues and problems your audience wants solved:

• You’ll get accurate estimates of what clients want
• You’ll identify what works better, and implement it to engage visitors
• You’ll attract better prospects, sell them more, can price offers higher, and get delighted buyers to refer new business

SEO Is Friendly On Your Marketing Budget

SEO is effective even in difficult economic times because of its longevity. No one pulls the plug on effective SEO. Your efforts can bring in a steady, growing return on a modest investment for many years to come.

We know SEO is great for cost-effective brand building. Smart brand managers use SEO to deliver online ads at just the right time to engender trust and plant a seed that grows into a money tree. The right SEO strategy can even help a business secure funding, find investors, or build recognition for companies planning an IPO.

SEO Can Future-Proof Your Business’ Profitability

Global mobile data traffic is set to explode exponentially in the near future, with projections suggesting 26 times growth over the next 5 years.

While attracting a crowd of new buyers is a goal for mobile search optimization, another is managing brand reputation and controlling PR disasters such as the recent Toyota Camry story that went viral on the Web.

Currently, 91% of all mobile Internet use is “social”. Optimizing your website on the basis of visitor intent can help you win this high stakes battle for a prospect’s mind.

Every Business Needs SEO

It’s important to recognize, SEO is not a cost, but an investment. An investment in the future of any business. A cost-effective marketing method with high return that extends infinitely. From a purely economic perspective, SEO delivers value for years to come.

In the ultimate analysis, SEO is less about mechanics and has more to do with economics.

It’s about getting more people to your website, convincing them to take action, and turning them into customers, repeat buyers and raving fans. Your profit grows, your brand gains strength and your marketing message resonates in the marketplace, rippling out to reach newer audiences.

His beautiful new website wasn’t getting many visitors!

“Why don’t people want to visit our lovely website?” Thomas wailed, genuinely puzzled that the results of his intensive efforts weren’t as rosy as he had expected. As a strategic SEO consultant, the reasons were glaringly obvious to me… but I had to soften the impact, and gently explain what went wrong.

Together, we quickly checked the site’s ranking on Google for his top 50 keywords.  They weren’t anywhere in the top 10 results. Or even 20.

You see, the not-so-apparent reason for the ‘failed’ website was the lack of something essential for both higher search engine rankings, and to enhance the visitor experience which can convert a prospect into a customer.

What’s that, you ask?

Thomas’s new website, though visually appealing and technology-rich, was sorely lacking in a well planned information architecture and website structure.

But what is “information architecture”? And how does “website structure” differ from design?

A formal definition of “information architecture” would likely put you to sleep! So let’s simply call it the art of organizing and labeling website content, and bringing design and architecture principles to bear on it.

To understand this better, we’ll look at the skeleton of a website, shorn of flesh and skin, stripped down to the basic fundamentals of what shapes and strengthens it – from within.

Basic Concepts Of Information Architecture

In medical school, trainees begin by learning about human anatomy. Knowing what makes up the body helps understand (and later treat) diseases that affect it.

At the heart of understanding website structure, and planning your strategy for information architecture, lies a need to know about terms like semantic search, latent semantic indexing, knowledge graph, and SEO automation.

Semantic search is an attempt to improve search accuracy by predicting the intent of a searcher. The shift from blindly matching keywords typed into a search box against a massive database, to a more “intelligent” form of search that attempts to understand what those words actually mean to the user, has serious implications on strategic SEO for many business owners.

Latent Semantic Indexing is an indexing and retrieval method that was designed to identify patterns in the relationship between terms and concepts within any text.

By providing unique context for each search term or phrase, it ensures that a search for ‘Apple’ computers will retrieve pages with iMac or iPad on it, while a search for ‘Apple’ fruit will pull a different set of results on gardening and growing apples.

The “knowledge graph” is made up of collated information that will help search services like Google deliver more than just a list of 10 websites, and provide contextual information that solves users’ problems better (even when those problems are not explicitly voiced by the user)!

The implications are clear. Keywords are open to being manipulated. User intent cannot be gamed so easily.

To survive a search engine war fought on the battlefield of semantic search, your business must deeply understand the psychology of your collective market, and then provide specific and meaningful answers to their problems, doubts and insecurities in the form of optimized Web pages that are simultaneously designed to rank well… and also fit into the bigger context of your overall business goals.

At first glance, this seems a daunting challenge. But it’s really straightforward if you proceed with a rational plan rooted in strategy, founded on information architecture principles and framed upon a solid website structure.

Before we explore these elements in greater depth, I’d like to make something clear.

This Is Not A Fight Between Designers & SEO Experts!

Traditionally, these two camps have been at loggerheads. Designers feel SEO ruins their carefully planned look and feel. SEO hotshots complain that higher ranking is sacrificed on the altar of a prettier website.

Yes, it is possible for a design-obsessed structure to wreak havoc with a site’s SEO. It’s also possible for a website driven entirely by SEO to destroy a brand or ruin sales potential. With planning and high quality implementation, the strengths of both specialties can be harnessed to offer a business incredible synergy.

Exploring how this happy union can be achieved is the goal of this report.

Today, any successful website needs:

• SEO (to drive relevant, quality traffic that is looking to buy),
• usability (to manage and convert these visitors into paying customers), and
• the ability synergize both to work in concert, building your brand and growing your business.

Analysis – The Bedrock Of Strategic SEO

Every business exists to serve a marketplace while working towards a purpose. Gaining clarity on these core elements underlies every strategic SEO initiative.

What is the purpose towards which your business is moving? With this clearly defined, it is easy to measure the impact every step of your website design has upon it, and intelligently plan the entire process for best results.

To identify your ideal keywords, and guess at the intent behind them, you must intimately understand your target users and how they fit into the broader target market that your business is trying to reach.

Armed with this knowledge, you can then set goals for what your website visitor will do on each section of it.

• Will your website give more information?
• Will it try to close the sale?
• Will it generate enquiries or leads?
• Will it directly bring in revenue?

Only after this analysis is complete can you take the next step, which is to plan the technology.

Technology – The Nuts & Bolts Of Your SEO Strategy

Several components of your website’s design depend on your technological preferences and choices, which are in turn driven by the purpose your website serves and the nature of actions you want visitors to carry out.

Which platform will you build your website on? Off the shelf CMS tools like WordPress and Joomla have their own advantages (and drawbacks) depending upon how you will use them.

• What programming language will you adopt?
• How scalable must your set up be?
• How will you encourage audience interaction?  (forums, live chat, help desk etc)

The scripts and applications you need and site performance metrics, acceptable server response time, and the speed at which your webpages load are all a function of the technology behind your website. All of these components have a bearing upon your website design and structure.

But all of this is the “easy part”. The psychology behind SEO and website structure takes some more effort to nail.

Understand Your Business Goals & Targets

Many website managers and/or business owners are not good at defining goals and conversion points at each section of their website. Every page on your site should serve a purpose. Along existential lines, you must ask yourself:

Why is this page here?

Depending upon the answer, each page should have strong call to action. If there is no specific goal for this content, does it even belong on your site? Ask this critical question of all your content.  Only after this is clearly defined should you roll out a silo-structured website that incorporates targeted calls to action.

By then draping the piece of art (website design) crafted by a talented usability expert and designer over your solidly structured framework based on information architecture, you will build a foundation that lasts for years. It’s like constructing your tower on a granite base instead of quicksand.

Consider Your Content Hierarchy Carefully

Every well structured website has content organized by taxonomy, or common shared characteristics.

Ideally, your content will be planned keeping in mind the broader context within which individual pages reside.

An online shoe store might sell different kinds of shoes like running shoes, pumps, and sandals, for both men and women. At a certain point, it becomes important to separate or organize these different types of products in an ordered fashion.

A theme- and silo-structured content hierarchy makes it easier for users to find relevant content. But all silos are not made equal. There are versions of this system which are touted by hype-driven SEO sharks that work very poorly (if at all) over the long term.

Well planned, themed websites will place related content into virtual silos where they are only associated with closely connected information. Such a structure can be created through smart internal linking.

By broadly classifying all of your website content under ‘Categories’, ‘Sub-Categories’ and ‘Topics’, it is possible to have a streamlined layout that follows the order:

Home – Category – Sub-Category – Topic – Content

Internal links from each level can be planned to maximize the delivery of ‘link juice’ to the most useful sections of your website. The technical part of this is easy. What isn’t so simple is choosing the appropriate concepts and terms that your target customers use and understand easily.

Craft A Compelling User Experience

Planning user experience goes hand in hand with your content hierarchy. While you may want visitors to navigate your website in a particular sequence, your visitor can arrive through any ‘back door’ and land on any page in your site.

Given this reality, there are key elements of an optimized website design that will enhance the user experience:

1.  Help them get oriented. When new visitors arrive on your website, they’re wondering, “Where am I?” A confused visitor is a poor prospect. So you should help them get oriented right away and show them how to navigate your website.

2.  Make it quick and easy to move around. As a rule of thumb, see that they can hop over to any page on your site with no more than 3 clicks (the fewer, the better).

3.  Don’t over-optimize. Google recommends building pages for users, not search engines. Over-optimizing your site by loading it with keywords can disrupt the user experience, and cost you sales.

Strategic SEO and considered web design is about organizing your site intelligently, taking care to preserve the attention of a user and nurture trust, gradually guiding them to do what you want them to… and making sure that when they do it, your business will reap the benefits.

Which Content Is Really Most Important?

When you analyze your website data, you may be surprised to find that the page with the highest traffic is not your homepage. In fact, your homepage may not even be in the top 10 most visited sections of your site!

So it pays to analyze every section of your website to identify those ‘long tail keywords’ that could be responsible for a large share of your revenue. It can be smart to turn your website “upside down” and look at what to improve on those internal pages.

If your initial analysis correctly identifies mission critical keywords for your business, then the sum of generic and long tail keywords (and synonyms) related to them (even if they do not contain any reference to your brand) can be a real goldmine.

Yet, as an SEO consultant, I often see clients trying to optimize their homepages only for their top industry keywords, believing it will rank more easily because of the ‘authority’ their home page enjoys.

The reality is optimizing a single page for several keywords creates confusion. Visitors who land on it from different search terms get distracted. Their first impression is that it’s a “messy” site where it is hard to find what they’re searching for.

They’ll back to search results and go to another site. You’ll lose sales, risk your brand, and hurt your overall business objectives.

Keywords – The Fuel That Drives Your Strategic SEO Engine

When it comes to effective SEO, keywords take center stage – but other aspects about them also matter.

Context:

• Are your keywords local or global? 
• What language are you targeting?

Content:

• How optimized is your content for specific keywords?

Structure:

• Is your content presented in logical order?
• Are you laying it out in silos or hubs?
• Do you have an optimized URL structure?
• Are your keywords in alignment with user logic?
• Is there scope to scale, if your business takes off?

Links:

• Are your keywords a part of anchor text of internal links?
• Where are they placed on your page?
• How are they related to other content and links?
• How fast are you building external links back to your site?
• How consistently are you doing it?

Navigation:

• Do your navigation links include keywords?
• Where are they placed?
• How much do they influence your on-page keyword density?

The Craft Of An Optimized Site Structure

Now that we’ve looked at the strategic significance of planning your overall information architecture and website structure, let’s get to the action steps you’ll take to craft an optimized site.

1.  Title Tag

Ensure that your title tags are descriptive and informative. Often, this is what shows up on search results as the headline that attracts the click. Making it keyword rich can help in ranking, and a powerful promise or appealing headline makes it compelling enough for users to bookmark and return to later.

When visitors arrive at your website, the title tag also helps orient them to where they are on the site.

2.  URL structure

Planning your URL structure to be keyword rich can help with ranking individual pages higher, and also aids users with orientation and navigation around the site.

3.  Category names

Making category names and titles keyword rich is another way to optimize your site structure. Look to Amazon.com or Zappos.com for examples of how to plan categories this way.

4.  Sculpt internal PR

Directing high powered links from your most linked pages selectively to specific internal pages can help them gain PR. This helps maximize the way ‘link juice’ is spread over your entire website.

5.  Content-rich internal pages

Every internal page of your website is a potential landing page for visitors coming from outside. Each page should be content rich, with optimization for relevant keywords being a primary focus of the on-page content.

6.  Build deep links

As part of your link building campaign, point some of the external links to inner content-rich pages, rather than having all links go back to the home page. Not only is linking to many different pages a signal of website quality, it also helps search engine spiders with crawling.

7.  Harness social media

Social links, serving as a ‘vote of confidence’, are growing in importance as a signal of quality content. Gaining social votes for specific landing pages on your site will help attract more visitors and also gain your site higher ranking.

Don’t Blindly Follow SEO Trends

They can lead you down a treacherous slope. Instead, focus on building a solid structure for your website which is scalable and ultimately, structure your site for users. Conversion rates drop when you cannot develop trust with visitors.

Don’t lose your customer because they:

1. Did not find your site (you chose the wrong keywords, or your website pages are not properly optimized)
2. Did not find the information (your landing pages are not optimized for the specific search term and provide generic information, or too many options)
3. Did not address their real issues (you don’t understand the buying cycle or they are in ‘research’ mode, so your landing page is not suitable)
4. Did not focus on them (you only listed a catalog of products and some self-serving boasts about how good you are!)

Look, at this point, you are dealing with an unknown entity. You don’t (yet) know the visitor’s intent that underlies the search keyword.

She may not be ready to buy a car. Or she may not have decided what model to buy. You don’t know if she needs a station wagon or a Porsche. You’re not sure of her budget, or age, or other important information that influences her buying decision.

All of this data plays a role when it comes to converting a casual browser into a paying customer.

So stop mirroring your own needs and talking about yourself and your business. Reach out to understand the customer’s needs and study their psychology. Bring out solutions that explain how your product or service will add value, enhance their life, make things better.

Conversion rate optimization is an important component of SEO. You can’t simply bring on more traffic. It’s like running ads for a 5 star hotel when you only have crackers and candy ready to serve. Maybe the kids will be smiling, but the adults (with the money) won’t.

You must first understand their typical needs and problems, and then have options available that solve them. Only then will more traffic equal bigger profit.

So… Why Strategic SEO?

1. Your business website is important.
2. Search engines are responsible for the lion’s share of your website traffic.
3. Organic search brings in the most clicks (and for free).
4. High rankings for the most valuable keywords is achieved through SEO.

SEO is at the heart of your business. Without SEO, your business may die. Yet SEO consultants are often ignored (or called in too late, and paid less) because those in charge of buying decisions for companies are unaware of the importance of SEO.

Effective SEO is about applying insight and knowledge to convert traffic into sales (or other desired results). Sure, it’s nice to be ranked on a keyword or search term, and report back with impressive traffic numbers to the board members (who often have barely passing knowledge about SEO and online metrics) – but if that doesn’t translate into bottom-line profit, was the traffic of any value?

If SEO consultants want to be taken seriously, and be given a budget to develop a revenue generating website that works 24/7 and will remain bullet-proof for years, they must focus on results – not incidental benefits. As a business owner, this is what you must focus on, too.

Here’s why strategic SEO based on information architecture and website structure will help you get there:

• Strategic SEO will help in your business development. You’ll find the “niche within the niche”, on a keyword level. That’s what guides you towards building your website targeting the right terms, stocking the shelves (categories and sub-categories in each silo) with the right content that people are seeking and willing to spend money on.
• Strategic SEO is an investment – one that pays your business back several-fold. As a business owner, you know (at least approximately) the value of your website per visitor. If you don’t, find out. This is a high priority. Organizing your website on a silo structure makes it easier than ever before to measure performance granularly.
• Strategic SEO leverages rich customer data – and helps you turn it into new profit centers. When you measure metrics and apply Web analytics data to mine the value hidden in your website, you will tap new opportunities and find potential income streams that can be turned into profitable content.
• With a good information architecture and URL structure in place, your website will be every user’s dream. It will need less tinkering and manual configuration as it grows and scales.
• Web analytics are easier to monitor with a clean URL structure and a site structure that is segmented into topics and sub-topics.
• With the correct structure and architecture and by setting up Web analytics for each silo, you can see which sections are not spidered or indexed and take corrective steps to ensure they are seen.

How Costly Is Strategic SEO?

Strategic SEO isn’t expensive. You don’t need a bigger budget. By using Web analytics smartly, you can find out which tactics are working best, and which ones are not.

Focusing on the effective strategies and moving some investments into the SEO budget can multiply your returns.

Just as you would consult with an architect before laying the first brick of your house, it is wise to discuss your SEO strategy with a specialist (experts at SEO, usability, information architecture and web design) before you start building your website.

Trying to fix it later will restrict your outcome and be much more expensive, especially if you are forced to rein in your plans for expansion. You may have saved some money upfront on consulting fees, but in reality you’ll probably lose a whole lot more from missed opportunities.

Would you build your home in a quagmire, or on property that frequently gets flooded? No?

Then why would you even consider building a website without first finding a safe spot for it? Your market research, keyword analysis and domain strategy will direct you to the right niche. Information architecture and website/URL structure will become your secure foundation.

That’s good reason to incorporate strategic SEO into the DNA of your website structure and information architecture, rather than trying to slap it on later like icing on a cake, when it’s too late to make any meaningful difference to the outcome. The few dollars saved on SEO consulting charges will be wasted several times over as a penalty for having an under-optimized website that leaks money in the form of abysmally low conversion rates and lost sales.

The real “cost” in strategic SEO is in not harnessing it to your Web development and information architecture – right from the beginning!

Image credits: Crestock, Trond Lyngbø

Hmm… you start wondering. What’s that book about? Who’s the author? But you don’t have time to explore further.

At the office, you check your email and Gmail displays an ad for the book you now realize you’ve been seeing everywhere! Back home that evening, you’re researching material for tomorrow’s presentation on household budget trends and the first website you visit has a review of the same book.

You can’t stand it any longer. You simply must take a closer look at it. You type the author’s name into Google and reach a page that tells you more about the author’s expertise and features powerful testimonials about his new book. A few minutes later, you’ve placed an order for your copy from an online bookstore (or even downloaded it right away to your Kindle or iPad).

That’s the power of SEO branding. Ubiquity, that leads to recognition, and ultimately to ‘buying’ behavior.

Branding Via SEO: More Than Just Code & “Fixing”

I call this interaction “SEO Branding” and it is one of many “growth hacks” that not only boost sales but also grow a business.

Here’s something every serious business owner who is seeking to tap into the incredible power of search engine optimization must understand.

People do not make buying decisions based on impersonal facts. They rely upon their perspective and how they think, interpret or believe circumstances to be. They add “emotional spin” to the data based on their gut feeling and mood, which significantly alters and affects your SEO efforts.

It is what takes top notch SEO out of the realm of code tweaking, tag fixing and similar website repair jobs, and rockets it into a more exclusive arena of strategic business building activity.

Most SEO consultants and marketers focus merely on the technical nuances of getting higher search rankings for their client websites.  They ignore far bigger, more impactful elements of business growth such as securing funding, finding investors or enhancing stock value – all of which are ultimate goals of good SEO branding.

Why Bother With SEO Branding?

SEO branding can help build recognition and trust for companies planning a stock listing on the NYSE or NASDAQ.

It can help a business find investors by not just grabbing top search engine rankings, but doing it in a way that (through optimized title and meta descriptions) tells the story they want partners to hear.

It can guide you to choose the right keywords and understand the intent behind their use, so that appropriately tailored landing pages will deliver the highest impact returns for your business goals.

In the eyes of most of your prospects, high rankings mean high quality. More and more frequently, consumers conduct their research online before they buy, and their buying decisions are affected not just by top rankings, but also by what they read on your page, how well their needs are met, and what others are saying about your business or product.

Not being in control of your SEO branding can become a costly mistake. And getting it right can be extremely profitable. Social media marketing is also  growing ever more important.

Happy clients, working for free and sharing your links with hundreds of friends, will spread your message to thousands of prospects, at no advertising cost. All you must do is give them the right tools (texts, keywords and message) – and get out of their way!

But even if I call SEO branding a ‘growth hack’, it’s no simple ‘hack’ but a strategic, iterative process. There’s no quick-fix approach to getting things right. It’s not a manipulative system of stuffing keywords or blasting thousands of backlinks at a site. It’s a form of inbound marketing that transcends technique to become a true “growth hack” with potential to expand and explode a business’ level of success.

Build Your Brand Without Buying Billboards

Traditionally, Big Business bought billboard ads. They worked on highways and in crowded urban locations to brand a business through creating wide visibility.

Display advertising worked in the short term with positioning a brand, product or business. In the virtual universe of the Internet, savvy brand conscious SEO consultants must incorporate the digital equivalent into their campaigns.

SEO branding through a combination of SEO and display advertising can score major wins over the effective offline equivalent of billboard ads because of one significant difference – online ads are viewed at just the right time!

If you follow a non-strategic approach of buying online display advertising on the highest traffic resources, it’s like running an ad on a super-highway. The right buyer may or may not see that banner for which you paid thousands of dollars. But combine this branding effort with SEO and you’ll ensure that your ad is right there at the time your prospective buyer is ready for it.

Your SEO-driven ad is not on display for just a limited period until your budget runs out. It’s there all year round, working gradually and sub-liminally to convince your best prospects that you’re number one.  This can happen only when you completely understand the importance of search rankings in the research and buying cycle.

Strategic SEO-based brand advertising will help you build trust with your audience, hack into your prospect’s mind, and plant a seed that will grow over time to become a money tree.

How To Go Fishing With SEO Branding

In olden times, fishermen put out to sea with small nets which they cast into the waters to catch a few fish. Today, we have far more powerful trawlers that can go out into deeper seas, and use massive nets that sweep up their catch in numbers that dwarf the pathetic effort of manual laborers.

Modern SEO is just like that. Any branding or PR campaign that ignores the vital role of SEO is destined to fail, or at least seriously under-perform on its potential. Running your branding campaign without a sound SEO strategy is like driving your car on a  high-speed freeway… in second gear!

Maybe you’ll reach your destination in the end – but you’ll waste more fuel, take a longer time, and likely wear out your machinery before you get there. It just isn’t cost effective or efficient. If you have six gears, use them!

Your SEO efforts are like a fishing net – except you’re angling for people.  The right people.

The prospects who are interested in what you have to offer are seeking solutions to problems you can help them solve, and who are driven by motives that you deeply understand, empathize with, and speak to in your landing page copy. That’s how you can attract your ideal audience like a magnet and convert them into customers, clients and raving fans almost automatically!

It’s important to remember this is not limited to big businesses with deep pockets. Even small companies can take advantage of SEO branding by being smarter. You can exploit the efforts of big brands that don’t have an SEO plan, and leverage the momentum they create in the marketplace to attract your customers – the folks who are in ‘research mode’ prior to buying or taking action.

You can cast your digital fishing net on other people’s marketing ocean. Their unguided advertising and branding efforts have already planted the seed of interest and attention into the minds of a large target audience. You simply step into the slipstream and pull them over to your website, which is already ranked high on search engines for the top generic keywords and phrases in your niche, thanks to your strategic SEO branding activities.

Knowingly or not, many companies focus on select views and keywords in their marketing campaigns because their branding consultants advise them to use big words. This risks creating a divide between the business and their market.

The ads may look great, but they cause a business to miss out on reaching a lot of potential clients, sales and business growth potential, because these branding efforts are not backed by a planned and well organized SEO branding strategy.

SEO & Branding Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Often, you’ll see discussions about SEO and branding take on a ‘black or white’ flavor, as if experts are driven to argue over which one is better than the other.

Unfortunately, this artificial distinction only leads to less than stellar results for clients. SEO and branding can work cohesively together to reinforce each other, creating much more powerful synchrony than either alone.  The impact of SEO branding can be long-lasting, measurable and targeted.

Yet, sadly, SEO and branding are all too often completely out of sync. Low hanging fruit is left unpicked. What is an explosively powerful business ‘growth hack’ falls by the wayside. Clients lose out on revenue potential and business growth opportunity. And this happens in both the short and long term.

What are your thoughts about SEO branding as a growth hack for business? How else do you integrate SEO with branding campaigns? Please share.

Image credits: Crestock.com