Category: SEO Costa Rica

Every marketer has goals, whether for their latest campaign or for the quarter.

“Get me 30x the clicks/impressions/conversions!” is a phrase I’m betting a lot of you have heard from a dictator director of some kind, and the struggle is real when you want to deliver.

But when you’re heads down trying to score more clicks or conversions, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture:

That a real person is behind every click, sign up, social share and conversion.

We often forget about the people who are interacting with our pages, our products, our brand. If you’re feeling any frustration at all with the numbers you’re seeing in your analytics, it could be because you’re focusing too much on the medium (sign-ups on your landing page form) rather than thepeople actually filling out that form.

When I attended MozCon several weeks ago, this theme kept cropping up in the presentations: we have to go back to basics a bit to create better marketing experiences for the consumer, because that’s what affects our bottom line.

The more you get to know your audience and create content targeted specifically at them, the more you’ll see your metrics rise as a result.

As speaker Wil Reynolds put it:

Clicks are people.

To help us re-imagine our relationship with our users and create better marketing experiences for them, three tactics from the MozCon presentations stood out for me: developing a solid brand strategy, optimizing for search, and personalization.

What do each of those entail? Let’s dig in.

1. Develop a Brand Strategy to Guide Your Campaigns

CEO of Digital Marketing Agency Kick Point Dana DiTomaso said it best:

Good marketing just feels right.

In other words, good marketing is cohesive, relatable, and prompts people to make decisions without having to think too hard about it.

But how can marketers weave this sort of effortlessness into each and every marketing campaign they run?

According to Dana, a solid brand strategy goes a long way.

As she explained, a brand strategy is the culmination of a brand’s core values, art direction, and customer personas outlined in one central document — a document that acts as a company’s moral compass.

This strategy should guide and affect all efforts of the business and, in particular, a brand’s marketing efforts.

Dana explained you have to go beyond logos, brand colors, and email headers. You have to think of your brand as a person, and have conversations with everyone in your organization (not just the marketers) about what kind of characteristics this person has.

The Three Key Ingredients of a Brand Marketing Strategy

There are three things Dana emphasized when building this kind of brand strategy for your business:

1. Keep it as simple as possible
2. Keep it consistent across all channels (online and offline)
3. Make it a living, breathing document that is a true expression of your company (and reflects your company’s core values)

With your new brand strategy to guide you, you’re sure to create more cohesive, enchanting marketing for your prospects – the people behind every click.

2. Optimize for Search Enginesand People

In his presentation, Wil Reynolds pointed out that focusing on the overarching experience you provide to your prospects has had an added bonus: when you’re concerned with people, their decision-making processes and what makes them tick, you’re mastering a skill set that can’t be disrupted.

New Google algorithms are constantly being released, and people are always dreaming up new methods for acquiring traffic — these things can and will change constantly. What won’t change is that people are behind every click that contributes to your company’s bottom line.

As Wil explained, when you understand who your audience is, what they want — and most importantly — why they convert, you have a highly valuable tool that can’t be disrupted.

And no Google algorithm update can change that.

As the Wizard of Moz himself Rand Fishkin explained, at the end of the day it’s all about balance. Whether we’re creating content, web pages or running a marketing campaign, we need to optimize for search engines and people.

He explained this in terms of the “two algorithm world”:

1. Algorithm 1: Google’s input
2. Algorithm 2: Subset of humanity that interacts with your content

Focus on the algorithm input too closely, and you’re creating bad marketing experiences for people. Focus too closely on the experience you’re providing people, and they won’t be able to find you in Google to begin with.

Finding the balance between algorithm input and human input is no easy feat, but if you can find that sweet spot, you’ll be flying high.

3. Segment and Personalize Your Content

Every piece of content you put online needs to be directed at someone. I’m talking someone specific. So specific that you should be able to picture that person’s face.

Many of the MozCon presentations placed huge emphasis on creating relevant, timely, personalized content. Content Strategist Kristina Halvorson had one of the best quotes on this topic when she said:

If your content is for everybody, then it really is for nobody.

Deep, huh? But she’s totally right.

Content for the sake of content just piles up and eventually dies on the vine. Kristina (and many others) called for a well-rounded content strategy that takes into account both the company’s goals and those of the audience — or a multitude of audiences.

Cara Harshman, Content Marketing Manager at Optimizely, agreed with Kristina’s point:

The one-size-fits-all web is dead…and lazy.

She proposed a three-tiered framework for personalizing content, to help you guide your efforts and make sure that you’re delivering engaging contentto real individuals who actually exist:

Cara’s framework for personalization involved three things:

1. Who to target: Slice your audience into unique segments. We have so much data that we can pinpoint even the most particular of people. Look at contextual (where are they coming from?), demographic (things you innately know to be true about your audience) and behavioral (interactions those people have had with your product/site) data to pick out a well-rounded segment of people to talk to.
2. What to show them: What are you showing the unique person that you’re targeting? Will they find it relevant to their interests? Are you sure? Put extra effort into researching exactly who your segment of people are and provide a delightful marketing experience for them.
3. How to prioritize: How do you decide where to start? It comes down to three major things: potential business impact, technical effort to execute and the requirements needed to sustain it. Remember not to slice your audience too thin or else personalizing for lots of really small audiences will take way more effort than it’s worth.

To circle back for a second, the best way to be personal (without being creepy) is to stay true to your company’s brand strategy and core values. If your marketing stays true to what you stand for, your marketing will feel good — and this creates marketing experiences customers can get behind.

Now Go Forth and Spread Good Marketing

There are people behind every single marketing action you take. You are not affecting the numbers, you’re affecting users who are interacting with your product and your brand. What do you want them to know? What makes them tick? What do they need from you in order to take action?

None of those questions can be answered without a little hard work and risk taking, but it’s all in the name of creating better marketing experiences.

So disrupt your current workflow and start the conversation about what you stand for and who you’re producing content for.

Your marketing will thank you.

By Chelsea Scholz SEO Tips.

SEOs have a tough job. They’re expected to swoosh into a site, save the day, boost the traffic, raise rankings, and make the company prosper.

The problem is, SEOs have their hands tied on so many issues. What should the SEO do, for example, if the site isn’t responsive? Or the site was made in 1999 and needs to be updated? Or the server keeps breaking? Or any other number of problems that he or she can’t fix?

Most SEOs aren’t able to fix every problem on the site. Why not? It’s not because they lack skill. Often, the issue involves the buy-in of developers, the approval of executives, or implementation from third-party vendors.

How does an SEO even get their job done?

Thankfully, there are things most SEOs should be able to do. The low-hanging fruits of SEO are easy to spot, easy to fix, and can make an instant impact on a website.

Regardless of skills and regardless of experience, there are things you can do. If you’re an SEO looking for some easy fixes and quick tasks that will boost rankings, look no further than these seven low-hanging fruits.

1. Adjust Your Title Tags

Title tags are the most important on-page SEO element. Moz explains, “this element is critical to both user experience and search engine optimization.”

If a site’s title tags aren’t optimized, then the site will not do well in the SERPs, period.

The title tag is located in the site’s header and looks like this:

<head>
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>

The problem with title tags is that many times, developers or website designers will put some stock text here without considering its SEO ramifications. You, as the SEO, will need to remedy this.

Here are the rules for optimizing title tags:

Make Your Title 50-60 Characters Long

If the title tag is too long, it will be truncated in the SERPs. If it’s too short, you’re not making full use of the tag’s SEO potential.

To make sure that your title tag is a good length, use Moz’s title tag tool. It displays an example of how your title tag will appear in the SERPs.

Use a Longtail Keyword in the Title

In order for it to be optimized, the title tag needs to contain a keyword. Focus on one longtail keyword per page.

A longtail keyword is usually a phrase that contains some descriptive words.

Be sure not to stuff the title tag with keywords. Doing so is a spam signal for Google. If Google’s algorithm suspects you’re keyword stuffing, they may devalue your site in the SERPs.

Place Your Target Longtail Keyword Toward the Beginning of the Title

I recommend putting the title tag at the front of the title.

I make this recommendation two reasons. First, the search engines will identify it as one of the most important keywords on the page. Second, users will see the keyword in the SERPs. When they identify the page tag as relevant based on the keyword in the title, they are more likely to click on it.

My title tags are usually the name of my blog post. For example, below, you’ll see that the title tag is simply, “How to Build 100 Quality Links Without Writing Fresh Content.”

This title itself is a long tail keyword phrase, and will help my site to be ranked in a relevant and appropriate way.

Place Your Business Name at the End of the Title Tag, Separated by a Vertical Line (|)

If you prefer, you can place your business name in the title tag. Remember, however, that your business name is not that important for SEO.

Why not? Unless something is severely wrong with your site, it’s going to rank for branded or navigational searches. That’s not what you need to optimize for. Instead, you want to optimize the site for organic longtail keywords.

Often, putting the brand name in the title tag is a waste of space. If you choose to include it, however, do so at the end of the tag, separate with a vertical line, like this —

Title tag optimization is a first order of business for any SEO. Here is a helpful process to follow:

• Identify a unique long tail keyword for every page on the site.
• Adjust every title tag to include the assigned keyword.
• If the site has thousands of pages, focus on the most important pages first — main navigational pages, top traffic pages, etc.

Once your titles are fully optimized, you’ll experience a noticeable increase in traffic and ranking.

2. Create Optimized H1s

The H1 tag is the bit of HTML code that identifies a major heading in your content.

H1s are one of the most common SEO elements. They’ve been in use for years, and every SEO knows about their usefulness and power.

However, I’ve been surprised at how many websites lack this core feature. Even if a page does contain an H1, it may not be fully optimized.

Here are the common problems that I’ve noticed surrounding H1s.

• Multiple H1s. If a page has more than one H1, it could be diluting the SEO power. More H1s is not better. Each page should have a single H1.
• Short H1s. Sometimes, the H1 consists of a single word. If the H1 is only one word, it’s not fully utilizing the SEO potential.
• Duplicate H1s. Google does not look favorably upon duplicate content — i.e., sections of text that are the same from one page to another.
• Very long H1s. Although short H1s are problematic, so are long ones. Make sure that your H1s do not exceed 70 characters.

One of the most useful tools for analyzing a site’s H1 tags is Screaming Frog. Using Screaming Frog, you can identify the following:

• Which pages do not have an H1.
• Which pages have duplicate H1s.
• Which pages have H1s that exceed 70 characters.
• Which pages have multiple H1s.

The tool also allows you to examine each H1 in detail:

Adjusting a website’s H1s is a relatively easy task. Once you know what you’re looking for, and how to fix it, you can instantly improve a site’s SEO power.

3. Add More Content

Google loves content — lots of it. The more content you have on your website, the better your pages will rank.

In one study of top ranked pages and content length, serpIQ discovered a strong correlation between lots of content and top-ranked pages.

Adding content is time-consuming, yes, but doing so will instantly ramp up your rankings.

Today’s web searchers expect great information, high-quality content, and plenty of it. Don’t simply throw content on your pages. Take the time to curate high-quality content that addresses the user’s needs and solves their problems.

4. Add Alt Tags to Images

An image’s alt tag is the meta text that describes that image.

Sometimes, a CMS will automatically assign an alt tag to images, but it’s usually not optimized. Something like “IMG-DSC1908183” is not a good alt tag.

This alt tag from Slate Magazine is an example of a well-optimized tag:

Obviously, you should also optimize the image title. Often, however, optimizing the title is harder to do. You should optimize image titles while you’re creating the page.

Optimization alt tags is much simpler and straightforward. Simply go into the image attributes or source code and change the tag.

Again, a tool like Screaming Frog allows you to identify how your site’s alt tags look.

5. Add Internal Links for Crawlability

Every website needs to be crawlable. What this means is that the search engines can easily access your website, visit every page, and index all the content.

What’s the best way to improve crawlability? There is a variety of structural ways to improve crawlability:

• Intuitive site navigation
• XML sitemap
• HTML sitemap

These are excellent tactics that you should implement. One of the best ways to enhance crawlability, however, is by building internal links. 

Internal links are simply a link from one page of content on your site to another to help guide the user. There’s no complex science to internal linking. All you have to do is create a text link from page A to page B.

I’m not referring here to navigational links such as the header or footer. Those are a given. The links I’m referring to are text links, like this one.

The link in the SEL article below links to another article on SEL:

How do you do it? Simply go into the existing content on your website, and create text links from one page to another.

Although there are no hard-and-fast rules about internal linking, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Don’t optimize the anchor text.
• Don’t link to the homepage.
• Don’t link to the “about” page.
• Link to deep, internal, content-rich pages.
• Add 2-4 internal links per page.

6. Improve Content Readability

Today, SEO is more about usability than it is about tips and tricks.

For this reason, you should make every effort to make your content easy to view, easy to read, and easy to digest.

How do you do this? It’s not hard.

• Use headings
• Use bullets
• Use lists
• Use paragraphs

By making your content more readable, it will be more user-friendly, and therefore, better for search engines.

How easy is it to read this text?

Compare that wall of text with this page:

The example above has clear headings (H3s), short paragraphs, plenty of white space, and centered images. It’s a well-organized page, and is eminently readable.

How hard is it to make your pages readable like this? It’s not hard at all. Breaking up your content, organizing it, and adding headings or lists where appropriate is all it takes.

7. Adjust and Optimize Meta Descriptions

A meta description is a brief description of the page’s content. It is located in the site’s metadata, and visible in the SERPs:

Meta descriptions don’t directly impact search rankings. But they do impact search rankings in a very real indirect way.

What do I mean by this? Let’s compare meta descriptions with the title tag. The title tag is a powerful component of the site’s search optimization. But the meta description? Not so much. It is not a built-in component of the ranking algorithm, and hasn’t been for many years.

Is it worth it then? Should you go to the trouble of creating meta descriptions for your website?

Absolutely. Here’s why.

A site’s meta descriptions are visible in the SERPs. As such, they impact whether or not and how quickly a user will click on the page.

It’s not just the technical elements of a site’s SEO that matter. What also matters? It matters what the user does when they see your site in the SERPs.

Do they click on your SERP entry (click-through rate)?

Do they dwell on your page (dwell time)?

These user metrics are critical for SEO. What impacts those metrics?

Part of the way to impact these rankings is to create a well-written, compelling, accurate, and engaging meta description.

For the amount of results you get from a SERP, the effort is well worth it. Simply revise your meta descriptions to make them the right length, to make them relevant to the content, and to make them appealing to the user

Conclusion

Full SEO optimization is a complex endeavor. But these simple techniques are easy, quick, and powerful.

These are the first things you should do to optimize your website for maximum performance. Within several weeks, your site will gain rank, increase traffic, raise your organic visits, and become more successful.

What are the quickest and easiest SEO fixes that you’ve discovered?

By Neil Patel Seo tips.