In-house SEO teams and individuals are in a unique position – they’re able to focus on a single industry and company, whereas SEO agencies and freelancers face the task of executing campaigns for multiple clients in a variety of industries. If you’re an in-house SEO professional, you’re probably already being bombarded with questions and demands for solutions to problems. But what tactics do you have at your disposal? What tools are in your toolbox? This article presents the top 10 tactics for in-house SEO professionals; basically, what I would do if I was an in-house SEO manager. #1: Analyze Existing Top Keywords, and Begin Tracking their Rankings The first project of any new SEO campaign should be thorough keyword research and analysis. The goal is to identify what keywords for which you want to rank at the top of search engine results pages, find out what your current rankings for each of them are, and track their rankings over time to gain insight as to … [Read more...] about The Ultimate Tactical 10-Step Guide for In-House SEO Professionals
Sitemap example for website
What Makes WordPress the Best Platform for SEO
WordPress sure has a come a long way since it’s initial release in 2003, hasn’t it? What started out as a simple blogging tool has become arguably the leading content management system in the world. In fact, WordPress is now used by 23.8% of all websites in the world. Sites powered by WordPress include brands ranging from NASA, CNN, Forbes, The New York Times, TechCrunch, IZOD, Best Buy, GM, eBay, and even Jay Z’s LifeandTimes.com, to name just a few. Even Google’s Matt Cutts is a fan of WordPress, calling it “a fantastic piece of software.” If you’re a WordPress user, it’s easy to realize why WordPress is such a powerful platform. It’s easy to use, it’s free, and has more than enough plugins/add-ons to help customize your site or blog to fit your needs. That’s not to say that other content management systems – such as Joomla or Drupal – aren’t worthy options, it’s just that WordPress is pretty … [Read more...] about What Makes WordPress the Best Platform for SEO
10 Steps to Effective Website Content and Copy
Last week, Oprah announced she’ll be donating $1000 per day to homeless puppies, but you won’t believe what happened next! Clickbait is not a sustainable way to develop effective website content. In my definition, effective website content and copy is the junction between content marketing and search engine marketing. Thinking about your audience is an overarching theme when it comes to making anything effectively online, content marketing is not different. Getting to know your audience is at the heart of content marketing, but it gets much more complex when you start researching and creating the types of content they want to hear and releasing it when they want to hear it. Writing for search engines means literally formatting your content in a way that allows search engines to read and index it. Optimizing your content for search engines will also be appreciated by readers, since SEO techniques can support user experience and navigation. Combining the thoughtful and … [Read more...] about 10 Steps to Effective Website Content and Copy
The Complete Guide to Launching a New Website
This article was updated 11/2016 to reflect changes in the industry. Due to the fast paced nature of the web, a site redesign is an important part of the optimizing your site and creating a better user experience. Best practices today may not be viewed as best practices tomorrow. You don’t want to appear outdated, so once every 2-3 years you should launch a new website design or move to a new domain. But launching a new website is one of the biggest updates you can make online. To avoid SEO disaster, you need to invest in planning before you go live and perform tests at each level to minimize problems when you launch. The following launch guidelines have been separated into the four categories: Launch Checklist Before the Launch During the Launch After the Launch New Website Launch Checklist To get started, I’ve created a Launch Checklist so you can monitor the website launch process. This checklist should be kept up to date throughout the entire move and you can even … [Read more...] about The Complete Guide to Launching a New Website
Use “hreflang” for Multilingual Websites
The hreflang tag is used to tell Google and other search engines the language used on a specific page on your website. Search engines use the hreflang tag to ‘redirect’ the visitor to the page in the right language. Hreflang is also referred to as rel="alternate" hreflang="x". When I was discussing post subjects with our site review team, Annelieke pointed out that hreflang was mentioned on our website, but that we never did an article about it. Perhaps that is because for most sites, hreflang isn’t a ranking related issue. For the larger sites it could be, by the way. In this post, I’d like to explain a bit more about multilingual websites and how hreflang is important for these sites. What is Multilingual? In our online context, it basically means that content is available in more than one language. This can be cross border, for instance French or Chinese, but there is a bit more to that. It can also mean a language variation (so to speak) is available, like … [Read more...] about Use “hreflang” for Multilingual Websites