SEO for Enterprise - Five Ways to Maximize Organic Search
As I’ve talked about previously in my post on Web 3.0, search engines today are somewhat limited in their capacity to index information. The onus is on the organization to publish their information in an organized and search friendly way. Some organizations employ in-house search engine optimization experts while others outsource to third party online solutions providers. In either case, I would estimate that 80% of companies are publishing their information within a less than optimal architectural framework let alone an appropriate ontology to tie all the information together.
On my recent trip to SMX Seattle, I spoke with the head of search marketing for one of the strongest brands in magazine/online publishing. Her biggest challenge was trying to get the editorial team to understand how the titles of their articles inpact her ability to get the site ranking for desirable keyword categories. I explained to her that she didn’t necessarily have to, and that this particular problem was solvable through a simple technology solution. Most are. If implemented properly, this particular solution along with a few other basic workflow modifications could drive tens of thousands of new monthly visitors from organic, unpaid search. If we can assume a fair online media value (how much it would cost to buy the traffic via cost-per-click) of $.50/click, one can see how a $10k, $20k, or even $50k monthly consulting fee pays for itself quickly.
Here’s my list of the five things an enterprise should do (with an agency or via an in-house resource) to maximize the performance of their website in organic search:
1. Understand how people are searching for you. Utilize a tool like Word Tracker Google’s Keyword Estimator to get an understanding of which terms related to your business are being searched in the highest volumes. Are users searching for your product or service via local/geo search terms? If so, which markets are the largest? Compare this list with data from your current web metrics tools (Google Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture) to see which terms you are already successfully ranking for. Then fill in the gaps!
2. Conduct an audit of the information on your site. Every page on your site should represent a term, which should be reflected in your H1 tag. Create a ‘topic map’ of all of the information on your site and group similar topics together. Remember, search engines don’t understand topical relevancy between information yet, only contextual or hypertextual relevancy (in other words, are the characters in the words similar). An article about ‘internet marketing’, while topically relevant, has few contextual commonalities with a page about ‘search engine optimization’ - from a spider’s point of view. Conversely, a page about ‘payday loans’ is closely related to ‘payday candy bars’. This is an important point to keep in mind when developing your organic search strategy.
3. Reorganize the information for spiders and users. The architecture or structure of your website is considered your site Taxonomy. The linking between pages is considered your Ontology. Create two separate maps of your site - one outlining the taxonomy (architecture) and the other outlining your Ontology (link map). The primary keywords you want to target (i.e. internet marketing) are generally represented by pages that sit at the top of your architecture. These pages should link to and be linked to from pages that sit under it in your taxonomy and pages that share an ontological value. The more nuanced, or longtail topics are categorized under those top tier pages (i.e. search engine optimization). Effective linking strategies are two long to outline in this post, but you can pick up tips by searching for terms you want to rank for, and by studying the architecture of the sites that show up at the top of those search results. If you have specific questions about your taxonomy or ontology, feel free to email me directly.
4. Build new content according to primary & long tail search trends. A lot of people ask me how to write for SEO. The best way to write for SEO is just to write good content. Don’t worry about having the keywords on the page. Just make sure that the H1 of the page and all inbound links to these pages utilize the anchor text of the terms you want to rank for. Put the page in the appropriate slot within your taxonomy, and watch as your rankings start to improve for newly targeted terms over a very short period of time.
5. Build relevant, quality inbound links from topically relevant websites. Sites that have strong brands or are authoritative sites on the web don’t have to worry about this one as much, as a lot of these sites are already referenced or linked to as authorities on various subject matter. Non authoritative sites need to become authoritative, and developing high quality, topically relevant inbound links is really the only way to achieve relevancy. As Google cracks down on paid links, and links become more and more of a commodity on the web, its difficult for an organization to manage a link development campaign successfully on their own. While link development services can be costly, they provide pretty quick ROI its worth hiring an experienced agency to help initiate and maintain your link development efforts.
For organizations - what challenges have you experienced in your efforts to achieve higher organic search rankings.
For SEOs - what are you seeing as the biggest challenges organizations face in driving unpaid, high quality traffic from the web?
