Website Development Archives - Page 3 of 9

8 March 2017

How to Write Alt Text

PROSAR: understanding sales and marketing - image of a businesswoman pressing a floating unlock button

Alt text, short for “alternative text”, is text in the metadata of images that shows up either when the image doesn’t load, or for screen readers. If you’ve ever had an email full of images have the space replaced with, say, a coupon value, you’ve seen alt text.

While it appears simple, alt text requires time and effort to get the hang of.

Why should you put in alt text?

In short, it makes the graphic content of your website readable. This is useful for:

SEO
People with slower/limited internet connections
Individuals who use screen readers

If you’re in Ontario, you might be facing down the legal requirements of AODA, which requires all graphic information to be accessible in text. This is in accordance to WCAG, the international standard for web accessibility that is becoming the norm worldwide. While this is a laborious task, it reaps many rewards outside of disability circles.

By utilizing alt text to the maximum capacity, you can reap a rich keyword benefit that won’t visibly clog up the page (but don’t overdo it, as Google will still penalize you for keyword stuffing), and make your site available to a larger demographic.

Implementing alt text on a WordPress site is as easy as installing Yoast (for SEO) and allocating the hours to writing the material.

How to put in alt text

Simple images: describe the image in the “alternate text” window provided when you go to edit an image on your website. Sometimes, you need to go into the image’s properties to find this window. If the image has a caption associated with it, make sure the caption and image are vaguely related— the image might not be read with the caption!

Complex information: Diagrams that show a company’s organization, pie charts, and other images that present information graphically must also have alt text provided. It can be tricky to know how to tackle these, because usually you do graphics to make complex information more easily digestible.

For things like pie charts or flow charts that don’t show many steps, you can still describe the image in the alt text window. Just be extremely clear what information leads to others. For pie charts, descriptions should include what it’s for and the percentages per allocated slice. An example is:

Pie chart for [diagramed information] displaying: 49% of funds went to rent, utilities, maintenance; 32% to programs; 16% to staffing; 3% other.

Flow charts can be done much the same way:

Chart shows [item] at head, displaying four branches labeled 1, 2, 3, 4. Down the 1 branch, we have items A, B, and C. Down the 2 branch, we have L, M, N.

For larger pieces such as infographics, consider having a transcript of the whole chart that is available at a well-described link, such as “Click here for transcript of infographic.” (making sure your links are descriptive out of context is also required for WTAG compliance!)

Regardless of how you write the descriptions, making sure to include key terms you want to rank for (when appropriate) will boost your overall SEO. It is a heavy time investment, but the rewards are numerous— including people knowing your company is thinking about multiple types of web users.

Image credit: oatawa

1 March 2017

Social Selling: More than just a buzz word

Ever since I started my career, I have been an advocate of social. Either social media, social selling, social gatherings or social news. I truly believe in the power of social. But what does it mean exactly and how does it make a difference in the way you sell or communicate?

When I first started as a social media consultant, SOCIAL was still a mystery term, a wave of change, the next buzz word on our lips. I remember that most of my customers were asking to setup a Facebook page and start building a following, but that was the extent of their social efforts. Customers were not yet requesting engagement or paid advertising. Pretty quickly (and nobody could predict how quickly) that evolved and online platforms became an even more important part of a marketing strategy and advertising budget. We now rely heavily on social for our networking needs.

I learned, like every other successful consultant how to adapt, change my offer and continue to add value to my customer portfolios. Social somehow remained in the hands of the marketer, while on the other side, more and more sales professional started going online, building themselves a profile and using social media to prospect. But at the end of the day, we all want the same thing:

Drive more business and make our customers happy!

I believe the social in sales is what will make us all work together. As a consultant, I didn’t realise that I was using social to sell my services and find my next contracts as it seemed like a natural thing to do. And it was, as I was simply selling my services online through social connections and my network instead of just broadcasting and pitching, while hoping for the best.

So if you are new to social selling, here are my top 3 reasons why you should consider this strategy:

Always stay top of mind

The social in selling represents a whole new network of potential prospects. Of course, you will continue to meet them offline, but you can now connect with them instantly and maintain the relationship online. Social media platforms and social selling helps you combat the ”Out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon. You can always be in sight with the latest piece of content that you shared with your network or a smart comment in your group where your next potential prospect may be to seeking information.

Direct touch to decision makers

Another reason for social selling is the difficulty to reach a business owner through coldcalling. A LinkedIn report stated that 90% of decision makers will not answer a cold call. This same difficulty was stated in my colleague, Dave Auten’s blog post. The business world is changing and it might be easier to reach a C-suite execs through an InMail on LinkedIn that he will receive directly on his smartphone.

The more people you know, the better

More and more companies are delegating major investments and big purchase decisions to a committee. Expanding your social network and building a strong profile will help you interact and connect with as many people as possible — who knows what committees your new contacts are on. As well, a referral can come from anyone in a company, so the more people you know, the better for you.

Social media selling may pose some risk, but sitting on the sidelines and not getting involved is the greatest risk of all.

So, if you are a sales professional, be social! If you are a marketer, be social! Regardless what industry you work in, remember that you are always selling yourself and being social can help you make the right connections to reach your goals faster.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

2 February 2017

5-Minute SEO Check You Can Do Yourself

Give this a try. Google personalizes search results to individual searchers so the results of your test won’t perfectly scale up to all the possible real-world searches, but it will provide you with an idea of where you stand and where you want be.

Keywords You Should Be Winning

Write down five keyword phrases you feel that your website should absolutely be found for other than branded terms like your company name or product names. Be specific. If you sell regionally, include your region. If your product addresses a specific need, describe it. For example, “monitoring software” is too general because it doesn’t describe what’s being monitored. “Network monitoring software” would be much better, but one could even go further and add more descriptors such as “free”, “home” or “open source”.

Type Them Into Google

Perform your search and look at the first page of the search results. Are you one of the top three search results? If not, are you elsewhere in the search results?

If your website is not on the first page, ask yourself if your website has content relevant to this search. If it does, why isn’t it showing up? If you don’t have relevant content, and the keyword phrase is truly important, then you’ve just isolated content that needs to be created. After all, you’ve got to have content about a topic if you wish to be found for that topic.

Are your competitors doing better than you in the search results? If so, you’ll need to find out what they’re doing right so you can act to better compete against them.

Does the search results page feature ads either above the normal results, or along the side? Are your competitors advertising there? If they are, they’ve likely done the math and consider it a good investment. You should consider throwing your hat in the ring as well; otherwise they’re getting visitors that you could be getting.

Does the first page search results page feature any Google+ page results? If so, is your Google+ page listed there? Are your competitors? If you own a local business, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a properly setup Google+ for local business page so you can be featured prominently in this scenario.

Happy With Your Result?

For the searches where you are on the first page, read your website’s search result listing. Do you feel the wording is relevant? Do you feel it will compel people to click on it? Is it more compelling than the other search results?

What specific web page are people being brought to within your search result? Is it the page you’d expect? Is it the best page on your website for your target audience to land on? Does this page satisfy their search and provide them with an excellent experience? Will they likely do what you’d like them to do, such as making a purchase or providing their contact info?

Improving Your Result

If you found deficiencies in your website’s SEO performance, they need to be discussed with your team. There may well be legitimate reasons for what you’re seeing, and that can be part of the conversation. If there truly are problems, shedding light on them opens up the possibility for generating ideas on how to overcome them. If you don’t have in-house SEO staff to handle this, consider getting outside help. A SEO expert can look at your SEO check, further develop the keyword list, conducting searches in a way that isn’t influenced by Google’s personalization of search results. This evaluation will provide you with a much better idea of your website’s SEO performance, and from there you can create a roadmap to get to where you want to be.

PHOTO BY SCANRAIL/ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES

13 January 2017

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Ontario is in the midst of rolling out AODA, a set of guidelines to make Ontario more accessible for people with disabilities. Websites will soon be judged on whether or not they adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, AA compliance (except for live audio and video). The timeline for when compliance is required can be found on Ontario’s AODA page.

Reaching WCAG guidelines helps open up your website to a wider variety of potential prospects, and earns goodwill among clients. Many principles of content accessibility are good SEO, smart design, or both. Even if compliance isn’t mandatory (which it is for all public companies and all private companies over 50 employees), WCAG are often simply good design protocols.

Where to Start

Low or no vision accommodations make up a large percentage of WCAG guidelines; this includes making sure all links are comprehensible out of context, there are proper code markers in place for screen readers to know there is text to read, and all information available in graphics is also available within text.

This is one of the most comprehensive places to start, and one that shows the most immediate benefit. Making graphic information available in text also helps your SEO by giving either alt text (for simple images) or search engines a better idea of what is displayed on your webpage (which helps determine its relevancy).

Keep Cleaning Up

If you have audio or video content pre-recorded on your site, transcripts and descriptions need to be available for those. Building a site map is also advised, for how it helps people navigate and find the page they’re looking for more quickly. If people have to make choices on your site, make sure colour is not the only differentiating factor.

Any PDFs you have available on your site should also be checked. If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can use tools within the suite to determine if they’re accessible. Make sure all buttons have a programmed purpose, so a screen reader can say what button to press.

Continue to Maintain

Reaching WCAG guidelines is both an initial investment and a continuing one. If you refresh content on the site frequently, then any and all new content must also be compliant. This includes new graphics, PDFs, pages, and audio/video. Determine how often you should review your content based on the frequency you update the website, and allocate time to run a small scale audit for accessibility. Our monthly maintenance packages can help you stay on target.

4 January 201713 August 2021

7 Reasons Why You (Probably) Need a New Website

Hand-drawn image that says Time to Update

I spoke with the owner of a manufacturing company recently who asked “why should I invest money in a new website when I already have good clients and I don’t deal with the public?”

In another discussion, a client stated, “We need to keep our costs as low as possible, so perhaps we’ll look at a revamping the website next year.”

As an experienced marketer, I found it incredible that seasoned and capable managers could have these viewpoints. Obviously, if times are tough and you need to choose between a new website and paying your staff and suppliers, marketing should take a back seat while you hunker down and prioritize payments. However, if you are simply waiting until your cash flow is particularly flush before addressing your website, waiting for the “right” time may be your downfall.

An effective website is a crucial piece of your marketing arsenal and shouldn’t be put-off or overlooked as an effective conduit for sales. Despite management’s best intentions, very few websites are actually designed to facilitate the sales process. Simply listing what you do and including a map as to where you are, won’t cut it anymore. The real role of a website is to interest and engage those who aren’t already sold. To educate those who don’t know about your product/service or how it can benefit them. To position your company and product/service favourably with customers and prospects. To initiate or nurture strong relationships.

Here are seven reasons why your website is important, and deserves your attention:

1) Powerful Prospecting

Whatever you sell and whoever you sell it to, your market is doing its research online. Prospects are clarifying product info and qualifying your company as a worthy supplier. If your website isn’t designed and edited to engage viewers and facilitate the sales process, you’re losing potential sales.

2) Create Caring Customers

We all understand the value of our customers and the importance of nurturing those relationships. Websites are an opportunity to always have the porch light on and the welcome mat out. A warm place where customers can be reminded of what you do, as well as learn about services they had no idea that you provide. It’s easy to take existing clients for granted, so review your website every now and then with a customer-centric point of view and ensure you’re addressing their needs and affirming their decision to do business with you.

3) Engage Employees

Using your online presence to motivate and retain employees is an important aspect that should go beyond a website application form. Featuring your team online, highlighting social outings, participating in blog articles… there are many ways to involve company staff in the website and welcome them as part of the family.

4) Build Brand

Brand sets the tone and positions your organization in the minds of your audience. Your website should be a hub for your brand. The design, messaging, and functionality combine to deliver a user-experience that will either support or malign your brand. A strong brand will help you gain sales, recruit talent, attract solid suppliers and please the public; so how is your website supporting your brand?

5) Supercharge SEO

In order for people to do business with you, they have to first of all, find you. Your website is not only your opportunity to tell your story, but it can serve as the magnet to attract viable prospects, too. Properly setting up your site for SEO and having strategically written content will lead to more traffic based on relevant organic searches. This increases your website’s potential to deliver qualified leads.

6) Responsive Design

More and more people are searching the web on their smartphones. In fact, this past Christmas season, Amazon shipped over 3 billion packages and 72% of those orders were made on a mobile device. Whether you have an e-commerce site or a blog, making your website easy to navigate and read is critical. A responsive website adapts to the screen size so laptops, tablets and smartphones can all provide an enjoyable user-experience. It also helps with your Google rank, as the search engine giant appreciates sites that adapt to the users’ screen, and penalizes websites that don’t.

7) Accessibility

In some states and provinces, having a website that is accessibility by people with a disability is regulated. In Ontario, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) outlines how your website must comply (based on WCAG 2.0 criteria). It covers colours and contrast, size of type, consistency and ease of navigation, Alt text for all images… there’s a long list of design and technical considerations to optimize the user-experience for a variety of users with different abilities. Not only is it good sense to make sure your website can be used by the entire populatin, but now it’s the law.

There are more reasons good reasons to look at what your website can be doing better for you; such as providing fresh content, facilitating administrative actions, creating process efficiencies, polling and intelligence gathering… what would you add this list?

Image Credit: IvelinRadkov / Getty Images

9 December 2016

3 Considerations for Finding Better Blog Topics

Above view of business man working place. Cup of coffee, laptop, notebook and pen. Business, education or blogging concept.

Whether you’re just starting your company website or you’ve been in the game for a while, it’s no secret that blogging has become a central component of content marketing. And, the reason why it’s become so prevalent is because frequent and regular company blogging can significantly increase your page ranking. In today’s rich information world, however, simply maintaining an up-to-date blog is no longer enough. To attract and retain clients your blogs should be written in an engaging and meaningful style; they need to stand out and be deemed worthy of reading. After all, pretty much all your competitors are writing blogs too.

So, when it comes to writing blogs for your organization what’s the secret? How do you factor in both quantity and quality?

To get the most out of your blogs, to rank high on searches and convert more leads into sales, here are three important considerations

1. Get a vision for how you want to house your blogs

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing yourself or you’ve hired a team of experts. Before coming up with topics you should be prepared to ask yourself what you want in your blog and to do some research. If you’re stuck on this, go see what your competitors’ and others in your field are doing, you need to see what they already have that could appeal to your audience. This will help you see how you can make your blog page and content unique and more attractive. No matter what stage you’re in, if you’re in the midst of changing or revamping your blog page, aesthetics also plays a huge role in strengthening and building customer loyalty. Once you’ve come up with a good vision of how you want to structure and design your blog page, only then should you start fleshing out blog topics.

2. Find topics by looking within your company, and your staff

Your blog page should serve as an informative, interesting, and even enjoyable, user’s guide. Every aspect and angle of your service or product can be explored in ways that make them relevant and meaningful to your audience. Your blogs should be written in such a way that it clearly explains and showcases all the great qualities that your organization has to offer. And, what better way to pinpoint all the unique aspects of your company than to at look at your staff for guidance? Your employees reflect all the different units that make up your company. From first-hand experience, they typically know what benefits your service/product has to offer and how the organization meets clients’ needs on a day-to-day basis.

Ask your team questions like:

What are some frequently asked questions from our clients?

How do we enrich the lives of our clients?

What’s a memorable conversation that you’ve had with a client or supplier?

There are additional benefits in talking to your staff: it will not only help you choose some hot topics for your blog, this in-house communication will also increase your overall knowledge about your clients.

3. Go to the heart of your company – the clients

The secret of some the most successful company blogs is that they’ve managed to get into the mindset of their clients. Every communicator appreciates the need to know their audience! Reading your blog may be a potential client’s first impression of your company, so be conscious of starting a relationship and be prepared to carry on a conversation. The key to choosing informative and engaging blog topics that speak to your clients is to pick up on typical buyer cues. This will help you hone in on specific company messages to promote within your blog. You can also get a better idea of who your company’s clients are and flesh out their personas. With this information you can connect more personally with your audience through your blogs, making it more likely to get referrals.

Writing company blogs regularly and effectively can seem like an onerous task. However, with proper planning of blog topics, it will prove to be an extremely rewarding marketing tool. Put in the time and effort in a strategic fashion, and it will surely pay off! If you are producing relevant and readable material, you can define your brand as a trustworthy and valued online resource; and that is something that your audience will appreciate.

Whether you’ve chosen to write blogs yourself or to hire a specialized marketing team, these are simple in-house tactics that will help as you strategize your blog topics. Read more on how to convert your topics into blogs so that they take advantage of blogging tactics like SEO and link building in “Blogging for Qualified SEO,” “Content Creation for Link Building,” and specific writing strategies in, “Good Content is FRUITFUL: Your 8-Point Checklist to Writing Content Worth Reading.”

image credit: Dutko / gettyimages

30 September 2016

Content Creation for Link Building

I’ve spoken about blogging for qualified SEO before, and blogging is an important part of increasing the traffic to your site. However, simply generating the content isn’t enough to be ranking in search. On top of the creation, you have to integrate the content into your website. A simple way to do this is link building.

Abstract geometric polygonal structure, 3d illustration pattern background — credit: gl0ck / gettyimages

Benefits of Link Building

Link building basically means linking your content internally among your own pages. While it’s important not to go overboard— Google will penalize you for putting in too many links, as it realizes you’re trying to trick its algorithm— placing links in relevant portions of your website helps their ranking and drives leads deeper into your website, reading more of your material and, as a result, qualifying themselves.

When you combine link building with a visitor tracking system such as SharpSpring, you gain valuable insight to your website traffic almost impossible to gain without link building.

Content Creation Strategy

Link building needs to be a part of your overall sales strategy. Since the primary purpose of producing content is to drive sales, it’s important you work link building into all your online content. This covers your blog posts, along with social media and even the text on your website.

A good link building strategy will holistically address how links fit in everywhere your website, outside of pushing links to social media and inter-linking blog posts. It sets up content management as part of your overall marketing efforts, which, in turn, helps keep you constantly up to date.

Maintenance

Now here comes the tricky part— finding time. While the initial effort to do a strategy might be a daunting effort, the resulting maintenance doesn’t have to be. It’s more a case of being aware that it will continue to be part of your link building process.

As you generate content, establish how and when links will be shared, and develop a system where you regularly review what content you want to promote within your website. Depending on how quickly you generate content, you could be looking at reviews every month or every six. Whatever you decide, make sure you use the time to take an inventory of what you’ve produced, how it supports your sales, and adjusting as necessary.

21 September 2016

5 Reasons to Use Content Marketing

PROSAR content marketing graphic on blackboard

Content Generation and Content Marketing are current buzzwords and part of a leading marketing trend, but the concept has been around since the dawn of commerce. Content marketing is simply using information strategically to communicate with your market. What has changed since the first messaging merchants is the complexity and scope of that communication and its delivery. So buzzwords or not, a more focused and strategic approach to getting your message out is now critical.

Here are five reasons why you should be taking a structured approach to your content marketing.

1. Myriad Touchpoints

The ad guys in Mad Men had it comparatively easy; they could focus on a killer ad campaign knowing that a high percentage of their market would absorb their newspaper, TV and radio ads. Since the halcyon days when a campaign brainstorming required a brain-numbing amount of whisky, the Internet has given the information and communication world a whole new environment. This new landscape is vast, cluttered and omnipresent.

A minority of small companies are treating their websites as strategic communication hubs (unfortunately most are still virtual brochures with a link to their dormant Facebook page). And even if you are paying attention to your website, simply keeping it up-to-date isn’t sufficient. Blogs, online communities, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+… there are myriad touchpoints where your existing and potential market could connect with you. A strategic content marketing plan will determine which are best for your company and what needs to be done to properly support them.

2. Consumers Want More Info

The Internet has empowered consumers like never before. They now expect to easily find online all required info about any product or service, as well as reviews, user comments, instructions, how-to videos… in essence they want it all and they want it now. A strategic plan helps you to determine how you can most effectively provide that information in a compelling way.

Early advertising guru David Ogilvy understood the importance of content marketing. He maintained that “the more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.” Ogilvy helped the industry to appreciate the value of understanding your market and providing the right information in an appropriate manner. And even in those simpler times, this Mad Man realized that “Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.” The fact that the communications and marketing world has become all the more complex underlines the importance of Ogilvy’s insight.

3. Open Lines of Communication

In addition to providing you with countless ways to connect with your market, social media and blogs also enable a two-way communication. This may seem daunting but it can be an incredible opportunity. A dialogue with consumers is a direct means to learn from your market and gather valuable information.

Ensure that the bulk of information about your organization online is under corporate stewardship.

4. Your Brand is Linked to Your Content

While you are putting good content out there, it is important to also listen to what is being said about you. Scanning the web for mentions and responding swiftly and appropriately has become an important aspect of brand stewardship. Whether you are thanking someone for kind words or a helpful suggestion, or addressing a misperception or mistake; dealing with it publicly and honestly helps you earn loyalty.

Essentially, it all reflects on you (or your organization if you really don’t want to take this personally). I believe that a company’s brand is now formed as much by the unofficial and/or unpaid content online as it is by the paid media and carefully crafted PR. Online, everyone hears you scream — the Internet hears everything said about your company and saves it for anyone to read. Your brand is living 24/7 online and you are probably unaware as to how it’s doing.

5. Much of the Content Online is Crap

This proliferation of information on the Internet has bred a lot of poorly researched, badly written and pathetically self-serving crap. (Yes, yes, there is also a ton of really good content, but when you research a purchase online, what percentage of the information is both helpful and well-written?) So users need to sift through the garbage to find what they are looking for. If you’re churning out less than stellar material, you could be doing more harm than good and actually tarnish your brand.

Conversely, if you are actually producing relevant and readable material, you can help to define your brand as trustworthy and a valued online resource. This positioning moves you a whole lot closer to a buying relationship.

Writing compelling content is not easy, heck, just writing good informative content is challenging. With professional guidance, a strategic plan determines what content you should be producing, what you should be writing, what your staff can do, and what professional marketers/writers should create for you, as well as a schedule to make sure it actually happens. And this structured process makes it much easier to deliver good content.

What would you add to my list of reasons to approach content marketing in a professional manner?

Photo Credit: Getty Images : Cacaroot

9 September 2016

Blogging for Qualified SEO

man typing on keyboard with ideas floating around his head

SEO is important for any business, but determining how to best improve it can be a tricky task. One easy way to improve your website, short of an SEO audit and a website revamp, is to regularly blog. Regular blogging gives prospects a reason to return to your website, and can improve your ranking— so long as you purposefully plan your content. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your blogging.

1. Set a goal and a strategy

Start with your end goal in mind. In a sentence or two (or less!) you should be able to explain exactly what your blogging strategy is supposed to accomplish. How is this content helping reach your business objectives? Talk with your team and do what you can together to ensure the goal is as clear as possible. No piece of content should be random or lacking purpose, even if it’s a short blog. Really examine your sales process to determine how you can use blogging to support it, and how you want to drive people through your funnel.

2. Make sure the pieces support the goal

Higher ranking SEO might get more people to your website, but that isn’t as important as getting the right people to your website. If you’re blogging just for the sake of it, without putting your sales goal to the forefront, your SEO efforts won’t provide as much return as they could. Have benchmarks and review points in place to adjust your blogging strategy, and make sure to review every piece so it does the best job it can.

3. Use inbound marketing techniques to further your sales

Once you’ve written the content that gets more qualified buyers to your site, you have to continue nurturing them along your sales funnel. If you’ve properly set up goals, you should know where to drive your leads for the next stage of the buying process. Setting up CTAs is the easiest way to do this, but depending on your overreaching content strategy, you could use individual blog posts in a multitude of ways.

4. Continue improving the rest of your online presence

Blogging is only one part of a content strategy, which, ideally, covers everything you produce— from website pages to social media posts. While blogging can generate an improvement, you need to make sure all of your content strategy is optimized to drive qualified leads to your sales team. You can do this yourself or hire an external agency, freeing up your resources to work on further nurturing those sales instead of trying to keep up to the constantly-moving target that is SEO.

24 August 2016

The ABCs of SEO: A Project Manager’s Perspective

To say that there is a lot to know about SEO is quite an understatement. For not only is there a great deal of knowledge, skill and experience required to be truly competent at planning and managing SEO campaigns, but the rules keep changing. Google is constantly changing the landscape, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, but each new algorithm can drastically influence the effectiveness of your efforts. Mastering SEO is like going to school, and the class never ends.

That being said — and acknowledging upfront my ignorance to the wild inner-workings of Google’s algorithms and how to tame them — this article deals with a top-level approach to SEO.

Whether you work for an agency, a small enterprise, an international conglomerate, or a non-profit organization, SEO is one of the tools you use to improve your online presence. If it isn’t, it should be. Virtually every organization these days benefits from a strong online presence, and SEO is an integral part of the online marketing mix. But what do you know about SEO and are you confident in how to approach it? Hiring knowledgeable people is an excellent first step, but you still need to be able to manage these people, as well as your company’s expectations.

We’ll start with a quick clarification, SEO can include the following tactics:

– Organic: Writing strategic content (web pages, blogs, white papers, social media, etc.) to help your website rank higher in searches.

– PPC (Pay Per Click): Paying Google (and other search engines) for keywords and ads to drive interested traffic to your website.

– Advertising: Paying other websites and online publications for banners and other online ads to drive interested traffic to your website.

[NB Paid efforts can also be referred to as Search Engine Marketing or SEM.]

Here are three important criteria for project managers when considering SEO. Your staff, contract workers or agency should be able to explain and address each of these areas to your satisfaction.

Accountability

First and foremost is getting results. So what do you need to provide I order for your SEO efforts to be successful? Your agency, or inside team need guidance and information to direct their strategy and tactics. Consider the specific campaign objectives, areas of focus, targeted markets (demographic, geographic, industry), content, keywords and budget.

Then, what should you expect from your agency or staff? They will quantify your objectives (how many leads, submissions, page views, clicks, etc. are required to meet your objectives), perform keyword research and assessment, create/edit targeted content, design/write ads, create an implementation plan, provide ongoing monitoring and reports with recommendations. Working as a team, you will constantly refine and add to the tactics and work closer to your objectives.

Note that SEO is not a quick fix. Attracting new traffic with content is essential and long-term, but may take months to have a measurable effect. Even PPC and ads, which can generate traffic quickly, typically take some time to consistently drive the right audience to your website. Moving the new web traffic through your funnel, or nurturing the desired behaviour (e.g. register for a course, ask for a quote), is also a process that takes time to prefect.

Benefits

A marketing rule of thumb is that no-one does anything with receiving some form of benefit. It may more altruistic than “What’s in it for me?,” but there needs to be some form of gratification or reward to encourage action.

Consider how your targeted markets will benefit from engaging with you and articulate that clearly and in a compelling manner. Look at each action you would like your new web traffic to take (e.g. clicking through to website, clicking on a CTA/banner, signing up for your blog or e-newsletter, asking for a quote) and provide some incentive to help them along the path.

Congruency

Some see the ultimate objective of SEO to drive more traffic to your website; of course, it’s more sophisticated than that. Increasing traffic is a step towards developing business, so certainly it is important, but you need to attract the key audiences that fit your ideal personas. So, if you’re an organization that is focused on serving parents of elementary school kids, you’ll only be successful if a good portion of that new web traffic fits that demographic.

Beyond the audience you attract, your SEO initiatives must represent, and ideally promote, your brand (which should already take into consideration your mission vision, etc.). Organic, PPC or advertising all revolve around content. Ensure that the tone, vocabulary and information presented all embrace your organizational brand and culture. Even if one of those parents mentioned above does not click through to your website, you’ve had an awareness and branding opportunity to positively position your organization in their mind; maybe next time they will click through.

And, of course, your SEO efforts need to flow with any other marketing and advertising campaigns your organization is running. Not just from a brand perspective, even theme. You may be able to increase the effectiveness by leveraging the theme from an existing campaign.

What would you add to this list of important criteria for a project manager to consider when employing SEO? Add your thoughts to comments below.