Here are some tips on how SEO works that draw on integrated advertising agency, Ebony+Ivory’s mastery of this digital art:
- Understand the needs of customers: The Google Adwords Keyword tool enables you to research what customers (current and potential) are looking up on search engines and it’s very easy to use.
- Make your content about one thing: Choose a primary topic that serves as the most central element to your business and remember that research is key to align your content to customer needs.
- Focus your content on what people are searching for: Make sure that your content is quality orientated, relevant and adds value to the lives of your customers. Don’t make it all about the sale. Rather use it to educate and inform the reader.
- Make sure that your site is accessible: Once content is published digitally it is imperative that the search engine finds it. Search engines crawl your website to pick up on what they can add to their index or search book.
- Link to internal pages on your site: This is a good way to bolster the effectiveness of SEO. Many sites do this automatically but linking to the most important pages from your home page and cross linking increases how effectively your content features in top search engine results.
- Remove anything that makes the website slow: No one likes a website that takes more than a split second to load. Get rid of unnecessary music players, large images, plugins and graphics that flash. Take into consideration that we are in the mobile age, where sites are viewed on a mobile device and a content heavy site does not provide a good user experience.
- Link to other websites that are relevant and rich in information: Although this move is a high five to another site, it tells search engines that you are a credible and trusted author.
- Be social and share: Sharing is caring in the digital world and it legitimises your content. Feature content from your site on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linked In. This allows followers to share your content with others, essentially signalling to search engines that yours is a credible source.
- Update your website frequently: Static content kills your search engine ranking. Counteract this by being an author through the likes of blogging. People want information that is up to date and these sites tend to be visited more often. From a Google point of view, sites with ‘fresh’ relevant content tend to rank quicker and easier.
The truth is that SEO takes constant attention to make its mark in the marketing mix because search rankings are never static. As a result it needs a dedicated person or team from your agency, whether your communications partner is a digital agency, brand specialist agency or fully integrated advertising agency.
Ebony+Ivory views consistent investment in SEO as the basic ingredient of customer and stakeholder engagement. What do we believe it takes to connect the digital dots in the full service advertising agency offering? Interesting, relevant and sharable content that is written for and published per platform by a tech savvy team.
