You have to know when to make changes. Obviously you want to make edits to your overall strategy or even minor tweaks when needed. But when do you make these changes? When is the best time?

Quite simply – most often your changes will need to be based on data. Analyzing your traffic sources, based on keyword traffic, referring sources, pages most frequently visited, goals met etc will be the most common factors. Based on data like this you should assess your strategy on a monthly basis and make a plan to change things about 3 – 6 months into the start of your SEO and every 1-3 months from there. But don’t let that be written in stone, here are more reasons when to switch things up…

6 Reasons You Know It’s Time To Change

1. Positive Keywords – if keyword A brings in lots of traffic make sure that corresponding page has supporting content for that topic
2. Make a clearer conversion path – make sure there are calls to actions and landing pages tied to pages
3. Negative press/keywords – if you see people searching for negative things – like bad reviews. Take action. Here’s your opportunity to jump into forums, set up review profiles, create a new campaign, press releases, social media etc…you name it. The worst thing you can do is nothing or react negatively in return.
4. Following on the tails of the before mentioned, make sure you are adding yourself to review sites, better business bureau, and other directories that matter. They help you with inbound links, a positive image and appear less like spam.
5. Take it a step further, create a campaign around large traffic generators. With success from basic optimization efforts you can easily take things to the next level – video, email, pod casts, blog posts, call to actions, events, contests…the sky is the limit.
6. Test, test, test. True SEO geeks will test to no end even if things are going well. It’s only through testing (anything and everything) that you will be able to truly see what counts and what has a positive or negative effect.

A website audit should be the foundation for determining how you will proceed with your search engine optimization efforts and/or a website redesign. Read this first if you are about to embark on a redesign and make sure you have the following in place first.

What is this for– To define content more clearly for your users (usability) and search engines (SEO).

Why do you want this– To inspect the framework and architecture of your website for both users and the search engines. So you will be examining some technical issues, infrastructure and the overall robustness of your website.

Who is involved – Your web developers and/or IT team will play an integral part in help marketers get this done. What if you don’t have those resources – then you will want to work with a consultant to help you get this done.

• Keyword Analysis
  Review Key Phrase Performance
  Number of pages currently indexed by the major search engines
  Number and quality of inbound links
• Current SEO Analysis
  Page Title review
  Meta Description review
  Content review
  Current Stats Analysis (if historical “pre-optimization” information is available)
• Keyword Research
  Analysis and suggestions for best key-phrases to target
  Identify target market/key buyer personas
• Usability Study
  Navigation/menu review
  Design and layout recommendations
  Page load time check
  Browser compatibility check
  Conversion path and/or shopping cart or checkout process review
  Accessibility issues
  Review for errors, bad copy, broken links
• Copywriting/Marketing Analysis
  Appeal to target audience
  Writing style and content overview
  Additional content recommendations – such as call to actions etc

In short the goal is to assess how friendly your website is to search engines and look for any common pitfalls and room for improvement. There is always room for improvement. The goal should be an actionable list of items for your team to implement to help increase traffic and get more qualified leads.

I’m one of those who believes that you can always learn something from your mistakes or things that go wrong. In fact sometimes you don’t know how to get to the right solution without failing miserably in the process of getting there.

SEO is one of those things where you will fail the first several tries. It’s ok. A great example is on page SEO. Meaning everything from Title tags, to H1 headers, content etc. Chances are you will not get the perfect combination of all of these with the “best” use of your keyword the first time around. So if you are wondering, well what can I do each month to improve my site…one thing is to try/test different on page SEO variations.

So technically your first attempts are not a “failure”. Thus every change you make can lead to improvement. You have to try to get anywhere to begin with, and you have to understand that you will not reach your goal of page 1 in the first few months and there is plenty of work you can do to help you get there over time.

If at first you don’t succeed try and try again!

In the world of online marketing it’s all about getting found and having a presence. Good SEO (one means of getting found) has always been about making your site and its content more relevant for search engines (obviously) and also users. Social media (another way to get found) is all about online engagement and connecting with your audience. Combining the two makes for the perfect recipe. And thus (through simple math) Good Search Strategy = Engagement=Use of Social Media

The problem isn’t that social media is useless, but you have to think about what conversions are of value to you. Consider the following value metrics:

• drive people back to your site
• receive large amount inbound links
• appealing to early adopters
• build customer relationships
• learn what your clients want, need and think (help set and meet expectations)
• manage online reputation and brand
• increase traffic from various sources
• share/distribute content yourself, and via others, word of mouth
• chance to position yourself as the best
• have honest conversation and feedback (priceless), that’s why most (successful) industry giants are now involved
• rewarded emotionally
• it’s fun (can’t deny it)
• gives small business the opportunity to leverage themselves

In every one of these cases the feedback and the metrics are coming from real people that I can reply to, hear back from and with whom I can strike up a conversation. I can legitimately justify why updating my status and adding more people to my friend list, replying to feedback and building relationships are valuable to branding, marketing and bottom line metrics for the company. Understanding all of this, and gaining that insight helps promote more conversion driven focus on your site. It helps you interpret what brought your visitors to your site, how the user first became engaged, potentially why they care…it makes all the SEO work worth it and helps those engaged users become “active” through your site.

Other things to consider:

• Find a social medium that works for you, testing and tracking are extremely important.
• Some social media sources, especially Twitter is hard to track because traffic sources are often from other tools used to connect to the application and therefore don’t always register the same with Analytics.
• Good content naturally spreads.
• You have to track visitors, leads and customers.
• Set realistic expectations – Social media cost per conversion is obviously much lower and there tend to be fewer conversions overall. The social media conversion rate almost always is less than SEO because it’s just not the same.
• Outside of time, social media is low cost. Just track how much time you spend and the leads from sources.

Part of any process of converting a visitor to a lead is nurturing and engaging that individual. While Twitter or Facebook may not be the medium for everyone, there is plenty of opportunity to become engaged, and really the question should be, can you afford not to partake?

I am sure you have been among the many recipients of cold calls (or cold emails) from some search engine firm. And if you are like me you find it completely irritating when they send you a completely bogus email with absolute nonsense information…where do they get their information? The letter may sound lucrative. They get to the point and tug on the emotional strings of their prospect, and if you don’t know better you just may go for it…but that’s why I am here to lead you down the right path.

So, here is what the email said:

Hello,

Thank you for taking a few moments to view my introduction of our search engine and web services, it really is greatly appreciated.

To be brief, I’d like to invite you to take a look at how we could greatly improve www.domain.com in terms of achieving top, organic, search engine positions.

I’ve performed a complimentary link analysis for you by utilising 2 different link checks for your website – with a reference at Google.com followed up with a more comprehensive one at Alltheweb.com. Here are your results:

• According to Google.com you have 5 incoming links
• According to Alltheweb.com you have 164 incoming links

(It’s very common for a difference to show between these two numbers, I’ll be happy to explain why if you wish to hear more)

The better your inbound link profile, the higher your website is likely to rank on Google and the more visitors (and ROI) it will bring you.  So, to improve your link profile and have your website rank highly on the search engines for your keywords, we are able to offer you a search engine promotion service that includes ethical, ongoing sourcing of links throughout the Internet with a view to building your link authority – this is achieved through a mix of links from websites, intelligent forum participation, blogs and more.

Additionally, and of equal importance, we will examine the architecture of your website and provide advice to ensure it is correctly set-up for current search engine algorithms.

We aim to achieve Top 10 rankings for your website on the major search engines, whilst protecting your ROI with our unique Performance Agreement that refunds your monthly payments should this target not be reached. Specifically:

1. We will work to achieve first page results for your website across the three most important search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN).
2. The search terms we use will be chosen by you and designed to bring you the maximum level of purchase-motivated traffic possible.
3. If we can’t achieve first page rankings for your site we will refund your money.
4. If we can’t keep your website in the Top 10 we will refund your money.

No-one can promise Top 10 rankings with absolute certainty. What we can do is protect your investment.

We are confident our methods work; they’re tested on our own R&D websites and are currently achieving first page results for many of our existing clients with search terms as tough and massively important as, ‘Graduate’, ‘sales jobs’, ‘Bling’ and ‘dresses’.

As our client, you will be kept fully updated on your campaign progress, with regular ranking reports that show you exactly how your search terms are doing on each of the search engines, and of course, regular contact with your personal technical consultant to answer your questions whenever they arise.

I’d like say thanks once more for your consideration, and you can take a closer look at what we have to offer by visiting a ‘business-card’ website we’ve compiled to provide more information for you…

When you do choose to call or drop me a line, you’ll find our approach refreshingly different, there’s no obligation, and our virtual coffee is the best!

I hope to hear from you soon, very best wishes,

Eva

Hilarious right. So I will dissect this in parts:

1. Professional firms don’t reach out cold to anyone. They work through referrals or are found in organic search or via advertisment. We use the tools that we talk about 24/7 to gain our leads.
2. Using Google for link analysis tells you nothing. When you search link:www.domain.com all that it gives you is a random sample of inbound links. It does not give you a complete list of links (ever)…I wonder if they include that as part of their explanations (doubt it).
3. Your inbound links effect your Google PR (PageRank) which is different from Page Rank (or positioning). Don’t let them fool you. PR is not nearly as influential as it once was. That said, inbound link are important, and you want to gain them naturally and having top search results listings is not the reason you gain inbound links. Sure having top page listings may gain you more traffic, and maybe those visitors will read through your site, and maybe they will share and/or link to information, but it’s not guaranteed. Nor is it guaranteed that having more inbound links will gain you top page rank. It is only one part of a hugely complex formula that helps you achieve that over time.
4. They aim to achieve top 10 rankings…cleverly phrases though still misleading. The parts that they choose to emphasize clearly lead the reader to believe that their site can end up on page 1, which should NEVER be a promise that any SEO makes. SEO should not be about selling ranking. Sure it’s seems like a good sell, that is how it worked years ago, and maybe that’s all you know how to explain.
5. Why would you let a client choose their keywords. I completely agree that keywords should be used that will help motivate leads, however this requires more than just a client telling you what keywords they want. You MUST do research, and research competitors, trends, history, search results etc.
6. As a client I would want to see more than my site’s ranking. Ranking alone does not bring in traffic. You will want to see all organic traffic sources, content viewed, time on site, entrance and exit pages, bounce rate and most importantly the number of leads through your site and specifically the source and what they did while on your site.
7. Sounds to me like a lot of their clients will be getting refunds.

PS: it helps to spell check a letter before sending it out.

What do you think? Would you go for it? Have you gotten any mail like this? What would your response be?