It is no secret that B0LD is also a business development partner to businesses across the globe for our unique way to play Search engine optimization (SEO) as a game. A game of chess more precisely. And like any game, there are rules you need to follow and strategies you need to execute in order to succeed. But unlike other games, the stakes are much higher for SEO. When you fail at chess, you just start over again with a new opponent. However, when you fail at SEO, your website might not show up on Google search results — which can have devastating consequences for your business. Search Engine Optimisation works in the same principle as a chess board, and you ought to be the chess master, to see one or two steps ahead – having a good strategy. However, as challenging as it may be, mastering SEO can help drive traffic to your website and increase conversion rates by making sure that potential customers find exactly what they’re looking for when they type your business into Google. Here’s everything you need to know about how it works and why you should play it like a chess master.
What is SEO – it stands for search engine optimization.
In our current economic and technological context, SEO is one of the most important components of internet marketing and business development, SEO is the process of getting traffic from free “organic” or “natural” search results (i.e., Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) as opposed to paid “ads” that are displayed above or beside the search results. The key is to make sure that your website is set up in a way that search engines like Google will pick it up and show it as a result for anyone who is searching for certain keywords but also other key components. These components are distributed into three distinct categories that will take you from knowing how to play to be the chess master you need to be in order to actually win at SEO. Your site will need to follow certain rules. This is the process of optimizing your site for the search engines, and it’s what is meant by SEO.
Why is SEO so important to you for your personal branding or for your business?
Search engines want to show people what they are looking for. If they do, they can make a lot of money from advertisers. The best way to make sure they get people’s attention is to show the best possible results first. The challenge, however, is that there are millions of websites out there, not only from your natural competitors but from anyone touching base with the niche you are into, no matter how big or small your niche is, someone also thought of it, rest assured. So how does Google figure out which is best? They crawl your website and determine then the authority (rank) it gives it. SEO is the process of getting traffic from free “organic” or “natural” search results. Search engines like Google look for certain things in order to determine which websites to show first. In order for your website to “rank” for certain keywords, you need to follow certain rules. If you follow these rules, you increase your chances of getting to the top of the search results. With that being said, SEO is not an exact science. There are many different things that go into how search engines rank websites. This is why SEO is still an ongoing process. You will never get to the point where you don’t have to work on your SEO any longer.
The principal components – briefly
Technical SEO
Technical SEO means, your website and your presence must be adjusted at the base, like a good foundation to a building, it allows you to develop a good strategy afterwards because your website is ready to receive it. Technical SEO is all about search engine robots being able to crawl your website and understand its content. It is the process of making your website visible to search engine bots via technical aspects like implementing appropriate HTML tags, JavaScript, site architecture and many more. With the emergence of AI-powered search engines, the focus of technical SEO has now shifted to making your website interactive. So that search engine bots can better understand your website content. Here is a useful checklist:
- Install + activate the SEO fields on the back end of your website.
- Create a “blog” page (if your site does not already have one).
- Optimise site speed.
- Indexing websites.
- Creation of a sitemap.
- Submit sitemap to Google.
- Verify the website with Google.
- Connect the website to Google My Business.
- Submit Google Maps (if applicable).
- Submit to Google Knowledge Panel.
- Set up Google Analytics + Google Search Console.
- Set up an analytics dashboard on the back end of your website.
- Meta titles and descriptions for all pages on the site
- Titles + ALT text for all images on the page.
- Titles and descriptions of services
Analytical components
Analytic SEO is the part in which you will be able to have a clear view of yourself and of the market and to see a strategy naturally profiling itself from the data. There are a lot of analytic tools that can help you with this, and you can also use Google Analytics (which is free). The key here is to set goals for your website, track the traffic to your website, follow up on the people who visited your website, and find out what they searched for. Once you have all this information, you can start profiling the data, and this will help you find out what your audience is interested in and what you can offer them through your website.
- Analysis of market data by categories:
- Ranking of the company therefore the authority
- Keyword analysis
- SERP analysis
- Crawling analysis
- Metadata analysis
- Link analysis (inbound, outbound, anchor texts, top pages, discovered and lost, spam score)
- Traffic analysis
- Competitive analysis
- Competitive search analysis
Creative components
Creative SEO is the fun part where we implement the strategy that we came up with from the data, and then watch the traffic to our site increase. The easiest way to do this is by creating content that is relevant to what people are searching for, but there is a lot more to it than that. You have to make sure that your content is something that people want to read but also that you find people in more than one ways:
- Write/update copy on the 3 best performing pieces of content already in existence to improve SEO ranking and organic Google search discovery.
- Custom keyword bank and report on Google search terms for your specific niche. This keyword bank can be used to create new content, write captions for social media, create blog titles, outline articles and provide inspiration for optimising current products and creating new products or services that will connect with your ideal customer.
- Digital PR strategy: Link building, dream 100 list, depending on which strategy we go for.
- Linking all platforms into one place so repurposing the content is easier
- Building landing page for conversion
Finally, how do you feel about implementing your own SEO strategy for yourself or your business? You are more than welcome to send us an email at info@b0ld.ca if you have any enquiries.
