Revenge of Black Hat SEO: What is the Bait & Switch Technique?
Read Storyby RefractROI
Also referred to as “search engine optimization,” SEO isn’t just a technique that businesses use to get noticed on the Internet – it may be the single most important step you take as far as your digital identity is concerned. According to a study conducted by imFORZA.com, nearly 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. An incredible 70% of the links that people actually click on are organic – meaning that they prefer actual search results on a site like Google versus paid ads the majority of the time. Likewise, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of the search results. Incorporating an SEO checklist like this one will help you be thorough in making sure your site performs as effectively as possible.
SEO is a way to account for all of this in one fell swoop. It’s a term used to describe a variety of different techniques, from keyword placement and volume to social media and link building and more – that all work together to increase your business website’s visibility as much as possible. It’s not just about getting you to the top of the list in a search on Google – it’s about making sure that you stay there. It’s also the perfect way for small or medium-sized businesses to compete with their larger cousins who they may not be able to outspend, but they can definitely outperform.
Before you make any type of significant moves online – be it launching a brand new website, giving your existing presence a cosmetic makeover or attempting to reposition yourself in the market at large – there are a few key factors you’ll want to address in terms of SEO to help you get off on the right foot. Be sure to consult this SEO checklist periodically to make sure you stay on track.
If the vast majority of all online interactions with a business begin with a search engine, the first pillar of your SEO strategy becomes researching all of the keywords and phrases that people are using to find products and services like yours in the first place. If you can optimize your website for popular keywords, your rank on sites like Google will increase – and you’ll start bringing in more leads as a result.
On-page optimization is the practice of making sure not just that your domain ranks highly in a search engine like Google, but that individual sites within that domain do, too. This not only helps to prop up the entire domain, as any reputable listed Search Engine Optimization company would tell you, but it also helps specific pages rank higher and earn traffic that is higher quality and more relevant.
Link building is the art of getting someone else to link back to your site from there own. If you write a blog post so stunning that another person links to it so that their followers can read it, that’s something that Google uses to determine both authority and quality (and in the end, your page rank).
Finally, reporting. Once you’ve begun making major moves in terms of SEO, it’s important to start tracking your efforts so that you can see what is working and, more importantly, what isn’t. Take a look at the analytical data of your site through the funnel of what you’re actually trying to accomplish. Are you ranking higher in your targeted keywords? What impacts are your efforts having on traffic? How close are you to your goal? What is your ROI? All of this is important to know.
Below is a list of just a few of the tools you can use to accomplish exactly this:
Above all else, perhaps the most important thing to understand is that SEO is not a “magic bullet.” It’s every bit as much an art as it is a science. You can invest huge sums of money in a sleek, sophisticated website and STILL not be producing as many new clients as you need because your existing SEO practices are the weakest link in the proverbial chain. Whether you’re trying to drive leads and clients, want to increase and strengthen your Web presence or just want to make sure you’re more visible than your competitors – an SEO checklist can do all this and more. Provided that you execute your efforts properly.
Executing your efforts properly is exactly what this ultimate SEO checklist was designed to help you do. Remember – it’s not about being able to spend more money than your competitors. In terms of online visibility and the extent of your reach across the Internet, it all comes down to spending every dollar in a smarter way than your larger counterparts. By focusing your attention on the right details of your SEO efforts, you’re looking at a sure-fire way to do all of this and more.