Currently, search engine optimization is becoming increasingly popular. This is due to a number of reasons.
Firstly, the number of people searching for information of interest through search engines has increased. Secondly, in comparison with other types of advertising, website optimization costs the advertiser much cheaper. Thirdly, it is possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign. It is always possible to trace: how many additional visitors were brought by the campaign, and with a correctly set up management work - and find out what percentage of visitors turned into customers.
In this article I tried to highlight a number of the most important nuances that should be taken into account during the campaign to optimize the site.
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Optimizer selection
The choice of optimizer is a very, very important matter. After all, it is to the optimizer that you entrust the fate of your site and, as a result, the reputation of your company.
You have to decide with whom you are going to cooperate - with a freelancer, or with an agency. It is difficult to give any unambiguous recommendations here - professionals (as well as mediocrity) are among agency staff and freelancers. The pricing policy in SEO is also very unclear, a private trader can “break” the price an order of magnitude higher than the agency. However, there is one significant advantage in favor of working with a well-known agency. The advantage is very simple: in the case of an agency, its reputation is at stake. Commit one of its representatives to an unseemly deed - and the good name of the company will cease to be good for a long time. But often this reputation is earned over the years and is the most expensive asset of the company. That is a serious company there is something to risk.
Conduct a preliminary conversation with several applicants. Ask to show the portfolio, ask about the methods that are supposed to reach the top. If someone starts talking about trade secrets and that the main thing is the result, cross it out of the list and go to the next applicant. Optimization should be transparent. If the optimizer does not want to talk about their methods, then, most likely, this is an “unclean” optimizer.
Do not pursue cheapness. Of course, it is worth looking for an optimal price-quality ratio, but I strongly advise against resorting to the services of those who are ready, as they say, “to work for food”. For the most part they are beginners, not only not owning the optimization technique, but also not always knowing even the basics. As a result, your site may be in the position of a guinea pig for experiments. And experiments with unpredictable results.
Do not believe, if someone promises to raise your site on a competitive request for the first places in the shortest possible time and for a penny amount. This is a unique wiring. It is called "rocket takeoff". Month - and you are in the top 10 on a highly competitive request. Joy is no limit. But suddenly, after a short time, you discover that the site is completely gone from the search results. I will explain the mechanism. There are so-called "black" methods of site promotion. With their help, the position of the site can really take off sharply, but it will not be long to rejoice. Special groups of moderators of search engines constantly look at suspicious sites and, upon finding signs of unscrupulous methods on any of them, immediately send the site to the ban, that is, exclude it from the search results. Moreover, depending on the severity, the ban can be lifelong.
As you can see, there are quite a few pitfalls in choosing an optimizer, so once again I advise you to approach this matter responsibly.
Goals are clear, tasks are clear
It is very important to clearly indicate to the performer goals and objectives. Here's what to do by the time the campaign starts:
1. Make a list of keywords with prioritized;
2. Establish exact dates of commencement and completion of work;
3. Establish what reports and in what time frame will be provided;
4. Find out all the issues related to payment.
In no case should not change the tasks in the process of work. This is not beneficial, especially for you. If during the campaign you change the list of keywords several times, then, most likely, the result will turn out to be tending to zero. Provide the optimizer the opportunity to concentrate on their work, rather than engage in a constant change of horses at the crossing.
Discuss in advance with your optimizer: what reports and how often will be provided. I advise you to stay on the report form, which will track the following indicators:
1. Positions of a site on the main keywords in issue of Yandex, Rambler, Google.
2. Site attendance. Number of visitors, hosts and hits. Sources of visitors (it is important to know what percentage of visitors come from search engines). The number of visits by search phrases. Average number of page views. Geographical distribution of visitors.
3. Dynamics of changes in the following indicators: Citation Index, Page Rank, the number of indexed pages, the number of external links.
I also advise you to set the frequency of reporting - twice a month.
Analysis of the reports allows to draw conclusions about the overall effectiveness of the promotion campaign. With their help, you can find out how the growth of positions affects attendance, how much time visitors spend on the site on average, according to which words the majority of visitors come to the site, do you cover the region that you are most interested in.
In the beginning was the word
The selection of keywords is a very important point. Ultimately, the effectiveness of an optimization campaign depends on the accuracy of this selection. I have repeatedly observed how, as a result of the fact that the words for promotion were originally chosen incorrectly, the optimization ended in failure. That is, the optimizer performed its part of the work and displayed the site by keywords in the top. However, sales from the customer did not increase. I will give an example.
A representative of the St. Petersburg real estate agency ordered the freelance optimizer website promotion for the word "Real Estate." In order to reach the top 10, a lot of manpower and resources were spent on this very popular and highly competitive word. And what happened as a result? Site attendance has increased dramatically, however, the expected increase in turnover has not occurred. The fact that the agency is engaged in the sale and rental of commercial real estate in St. Petersburg. According to the word “real estate”, rather diverse visitors came to the site. Those who wanted to rent an apartment in Moscow, buy property in Cyprus, make an exchange from Sochi to Vladivostok, etc.
It should be noted that a good optimizer would have predicted this situation in advance and warned the client about the inexpediency of choosing a promotion on a given word. And as a substitute, I would suggest the words “commercial real estate Petersburg”, “office rent in St. Petersburg”, “sale of non-residential premises of St. Petersburg” and so on. The majority of visitors who came according to these phrases would be exclusively targeted and, accordingly, the conversion of visitors into buyers would significantly increase. For the sake of which everything, in fact, was started.
So, when selecting keywords, I recommend using the following rules:
1. Choose only those keywords that directly relate to your activity. Avoid common words - better formulate some narrower ones.
2. Keywords should not be too much, otherwise there will be a dispersion of effort. Agree, it is better to be in the top ten for 15 carefully selected, targeted words than in the third for 50.
3. Pay attention to the frequency of word requests (in Yandex and Rambler, there are special services for this).
4. Listen to the advice of your optimizer about the advisability of using a word.
A series of magical changes ...
Be prepared for the fact that in the process of optimization on the site there will be some changes. Often you have to deal with the statements of the client, like: “Optimize the site, but do not change anything on it”. He has to explain that in this case it is impossible to vouch for the result. In order to raise the site by key requests, it is necessary to optimize the text, navigation, technical optimization of individual elements. The establishment of external links to the site is certainly a very important element of optimization, but a fairly large amount of work, in any case, will be performed directly on the site. In addition, if a professional is engaged in site optimization, all the changes made will only benefit the convenience and informativeness of the site.
I will list which elements of the site are most often subject to change.
Site texts. One of the main tasks solved in the optimization process is to increase the relevance of the site to certain key queries. And here you can not do without optimizing the texts of the site. It is rather difficult to achieve high positions in a word that has never been found on the site. This means that the texts will have to be changed: increase the density of keywords in them, mark the text with selection tags, put keywords into the headings.
However, the text must remain readable. Of course, if you write the word “broom” on a page 400 times, pile up phrases like “The most broom brooms, from the legendary broom maker“ Broom & Broom ””, this may affect the position of the site by the word “Broom”, but a person who read a couple of paragraphs text is unlikely to become your client.
Therefore, let me give you a little advice: ask the optimizer to send you the modified texts in the Word file, with the changes highlighted in color. This will allow you to check the texts for the stylistic conformity of the general line of the site, and also for blunders that people who are not familiar with the intricacies of your activity can allow.
Splash page. Quite often, a page with a colorful screensaver or a small animated video is set as the main page on the site. Text information and navigation elements on such a page are usually absent. This is the so-called splash page.
I will reveal a small professional secret: the contents of the main page is very important for the search robot. Unfortunately, he (the robot) cannot fully appreciate the delights of the design of the splash page, for it is just a page without text. As a result, the robot sharply loses interest both to the main page and to the site as a whole.
In order to rectify the situation, it is not at all necessary to remove the splash page (it should be borne in mind that usually a splash page bears an image load and gives the site a special charm). It will be enough to add some thematic information to the page. Two neat columns of news on the sides, a few introductory paragraphs about the company's activities not only do not violate the overall concept of the splash page, but also give it a finished look.
Navigation. One of the elements of the site, which the search robot first draws attention to, is the menu items. The logic here is obvious: the item names are the names of the sections of the site. Accordingly, if the keyword is present in the menu, it means that a whole section of the site is devoted to it.
Here are 3 typical cases in which you need to make adjustments to site navigation:
1. Graphical presentation of menu items. Often, designers make navigation in the form of hand-drawn buttons with inscriptions. The search robot, of course, cannot read such inscriptions. So what to do? Simply replacing the buttons with text elements would mean destroying the integrity of the design intent. In such cases, create an alternative text menu in which the same sections will be presented in text form. This menu is located, as a rule, at the bottom of the page, although options are also possible.
2. Using javascript in navigation. There are many “bells and whistles” for navigation, written in the scripting language JavaScript. This is a variety of lights, pop-up windows, scrolling cursors, well, everything like that. Sometimes they look good on the page, sometimes not so much, but now it's not about that. And the fact that these scripts significantly complicate the visibility of textual navigation content for search robots. In order to remedy the situation, the optimizers either create similar "chips" using standard HTML (imagine that this is often possible), or, as in the previous case, an alternative menu is created.
3. Use common words as section titles. Quite often, section titles consist of common words like “About the Company”, “Products”, “Services”, etc. We need to add specifics, for example, by placing a second-level menu with a list of these products under “Products”. Of course, this does not mean at all that if you produce a couple of hundred titles, you have to lay them all out in the navigation. It will be quite enough to select the main groups. Thus, two hares will be killed at once: the search robot will receive the keywords in navigation, and the visitor will see the full range of the product at a glance.
By the way, I want to note that in addition to improving the visibility of the site pages by the search robot, all the above changes will make the site interface more understandable and convenient for the visitor.
Conclusion
During the campaign to promote the site, one of the most common mistakes is a formalist approach to the process, when the customer’s participation is limited to regular payment of bills and a quick review of reports.
We must not forget that website optimization is primarily a marketing event, the main goal of which is to increase sales. Moreover, with proper approach, the site can become one of the main sales channels. It is necessary to try to reach your target audience most fully, about which you probably know much more than the optimizer. Therefore, optimization should be a two-way process involving close cooperation between the optimizer and the customer.
Source:
Marketing Blog