With the new year coming and priorities being re-aligned, we want to remind you that competition in field of search engine optimization (SEO) is on fire and staying ahead of the curve is more critical than ever. Not only do you want to make sure that you have a tactical plan for fresh, high-quality content, but you’ll want to take advantage of video content and optimize your SEO for voice search in 2023. But make sure your core SEO is strong, constantly revisited and part of your overall SEO strategy.
Unfortunately, we’ve come across many retailers and brands that do not have properly optimized title tags and meta descriptions (i.e., don’t have keywords in them and are not the proper length). Other common misses are images not having alt-text and are too large, no schema mark up, broken links, broken images, not having a properly setup Google My Business Page, and the list goes on. The main challenge we often see is lack of resources on their team to implement. SEO needs to be an ongoing and part of your overall digital marketing efforts. Properly setting up your site will not only help you reach your organic results, but it will also assist with your paid efforts with search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM). All digital marketing is a cohesive unit and SEO is the start.
Here’s a checklist of core SEO to get right:
- Title tags and meta descriptions – critical to both user experience and SEO, always place important keywords close to the front and use best practices for character limits
- 404 errors – hinders user experience and makes it harder for search engines to crawl your site; negatively affects SEO
- Image optimization – will help your images rank in image search, improve site speed, and enhance user experience (if images load faster so does your site)
- Schema markup – lets search engines know what your site is about, allows you to show rich snippets, as a brand, you will own your brands SERPs
- Link building – quality inbound links show search engines your site has valuable content, thus increasing your ranking
- Page speed – if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, you will lose traffic to you site and as a result lose sales
- Local search listings – allows the retailer to list address, store hours, promos on Google Maps; increases relevant traffic, trust and authority, local reviews
- Featured snippet – They appear on the top of the search page and allow the brand to show more information on their SERP results
- Use Google Search Console – monitor errors on your site, see what keywords users are typing in your internal search (tip: use those results not only in your organic efforts, but in paid as well)
- Google E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) – follow these principles to provide value to your site visitors and users
Remember, SEO is not a one and done task; it is ongoing and should always be top-of-mind within your organization. Even the most basic SEO tasks can lead to amazing results for a retailer who is willing to put in the time and effort. Once you have the basics down, optimizing your SEO can improve the overall visitor experience, make you more competitive, and allow you to benefit from Google’s predictive search.
If you need help with your SEO strategy and tactics, we are here and ready to assist. Contact us.
