Search Engine Optimization

Technical-SEO

Our approach to SEO work will improve your organic Search Engine presence, offering a balance of analysis, recommendations and task implementation. We focus on maximizing your Search Engine visibility through the application of SEO best practices.

Overview

What is a search engine?

A web search engine is a software system that is designed and programmed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The most popular U.S. search engines are Google and Bing.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process used to help a website be discovered and increase it's visibility in a search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "organic,” results. In general, higher ranked and more frequently listed websites will receive more attention and visitors from the search engine's users.

SEO strategy takes into account the complex workings of search engines and the keywords that a given target audience may use when searching for a product or service.

How do search engines work?

Search engines use automated software (known as robots or spiders) to follow links on websites, harvesting information as they go. This information is used when ranking a website (or page) for a given set of keywords being searched.

A comprehensive SEO strategy involves following best practices that will simply and clearly supply the search engine robots with the information they need for ranking.

Where do you find SEO Best Practices?

Both Google and Bing provide best practices documentation, videos, and on-line website analysis tools. The guidelines are similar across the various search engines.

By following the guidelines and making adjustments to your website, we can improve your search engine rank.

Areas of Focus

KEYWORD RESEARCH

Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, and high return activities in the search marketing field. Ranking for the right keywords can make or break your website. By researching your market's keyword demand you can learn which terms and phrases to target with SEO. You have the unique understanding of your clients and their needs and it is important to incorporate your keywords into your website.

ON PAGE SEO (text on website that visitors can see)

Content is key. By providing clear, deep, easy to find content on your website, search engines are more likely to show your content in search results.

Proper use of "header tags" to display on-page text is essential to SEO.

TECHNICAL SEO (behind the scenes programming)

A professionally coded website provides the search engines the information they are looking for, in the format that they expect.

"Meta Tags" for each page of your website provide search engines additional information in order to better understand the content of your website.

How a website is setup on a server is also important to search engines. Additional files added to your server will help search engines crawl your site and ensuring they are not blocked at the server level.

SOCIAL SEO

Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results. Link building is also a proven marketing tactic for increasing brand awareness.

Social media plays an important role in today’s effort to rank well in search results. If you are socially active online with followers sharing your information, search engines will pick up these positive signals which can have a substantial impact on how your website ranks organically.

Areas of Focus - Details

If you are interested to learn more, click to see technical tasks in detail.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

  • Identify the “core” keyword phrase clusters to be targeted (based on target market, target audience and competitor site analysis)

ON PAGE SEO

Page Header Text

  • The h1 is an important tag and it should not be skipped on a page
  • Use header text on pages that incorporates your keyword research
  • The h1 tag should contain a basic description of the page content
  • Check for keyword consistency between the header tags and other parts of the page
  • Use sub-headers to structure a site when appropriate using h2/h3 tags
  • Do not stuff your heading tags with keywords
  • Do not use more than one h1 tag on a page
  • Do not use heading tags as hidden text
  • Do not repeat heading tags on different pages of your site
  • Avoid using identical content for both your page’s h1 tag and meta title tag.
  • Do not use heading tags for styling text but use them for presenting organized and structured content on pages. Use CSS stylesheets for the purpose of styling.

Additional on-page tasks

  • Incorporate your keyword research into your body copy
  • Consider adding a blog to your site, but only if you are able to maintain it
  • If you have a blog, pay close attention to the text used in your post titles
  • Make your site easy to navigate
  • Add a user site map page
  • Use text for navigation
  • Have a useful 404 page
  • Write better anchor text (for example: a link to a PDF should not be “click here”, it should be the title of the document)
  • Cross link liberally inside your site between relevant, related content; link to external sites as well
  • Add privacy policy, terms of use and/or affiliate disclosure pages to your site
  • All social sharing to your site

TECHNICAL SEO

Title Meta Tags

  • Create unique title tags for each page
  • Use brief, but descriptive titles

Description Meta Tags

  • Make use of the "description" meta tag
  • Accurately summarize the page's content
  • Use unique descriptions for each page
  • Use brief, but descriptive image alt text

Additional Technical SEO Tasks

  • Website should be mobile friendly
  • Consider using HTTPS
  • Validate HTML code and correct errors when needed
  • Check the health and configuration of domain DNS setup
  • Add canonical tag to help search engines determine which version of a URL is preferred
  • Create/edit robots.txt file
  • Verify that crawlers are not blocked accidentally at the server level
  • Create/edit sitemap.xml file
  • Implement of Google Analytics
  • Use of features within Bing and Google Webmaster Tools such as Submit URL and Sitemap Upload
  • Add Google and Bing Website Verification files to site
  • Review page load time - improve as necessary
    • Optimize Image Size and Format
    • Optimize Dependencies - Plugins, Tracking Scripts, CMS Software
    • Avoid Inline JS and CSS files
    • Optimize Caching
    • Avoid render blocking scripts
    • Avoid Redirects
    • Set up G-Zip Encoding
    • Reduce HTTP Requests
    • Minification of JavaScript and CSS
    • Reduce Cookie Size
  • Make Use of Structured Data whenever possible
  • Add Geo meta tag to home page
  • Add Micro Formats to contact page - important for local search
  • Verify that any site or page redirects are handled properly
  • Setup 301 redirect of non-www to www, or www to non-www
  • Make domain whois public
  • Consider using keywords in domain name - especially if setting up new domain
  • Use brief but descriptive filenames
  • File names should be in the format: sample-filename-format.jpg

SOCIAL SEO

Link building

  • Promote site to increase the number inbound links
    • Blogging
    • Guest blogging - high-quality on-topic only
  • Link Reclamation - Fix 404 errors

Social networks

  • Setup a Google+ For Business account
    • Create Google Places page
    • Edit and upload data as required to achieve 100% completion rating
  • Be active on appropriate social networks if they can be updated and maintained
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • LinkedIn
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Etc.

Client SEO Samples

keywords (Google rank)

bettison.com
twin cities crisis communications (1-2)
litigation communications minneapolis (1-2)
minneapolis crisis communications (1)
minneapolis crisis public relations (1)

westphoto.com
minneapolis nikon cameras (1-2-3)
minneapolis canon cameras (1-2)
minneapolis camera rental (1-2)
twin cities photo store (2)
minneapolis buy camera (3)