The 12 Days of SEO
The holiday season is always a busy time of year with year end reporting and new year planning, all while trying to maintain and manage your marketing efforts. In the digital marketing industry, which never slows down, the holiday season is no different! Search engines are still constantly making algorithm changes and digital advertising platforms are implementing new updates.
While this can be an exciting (and sometimes stressful) time of year, this holiday season, the team at Ontario SEO have put together the 12 Days of SEO to help bring a little joy to each of your days leading up to Christmas. While there aren’t three French Hens, two turtle-doves or a partridge in a pear tree, there are valuable gifts to help enhance your SEO initiatives and ensure you remain visible online during this important time of year.
Be Human
On the first day of SEO, we remind you to always be human. When writing content for your website, it is extremely important that you are writing for your target audience, not search engine crawlers. While it is tempting to create over optimized pages in hopes that it will rank better on Google (which it wont), you will end up frustrating and losing website visitors and potential customers as over optimized content is painful to read.
Don’t Chase the Algorithm
On the second day of SEO, we remind you to stick to the fundamentals and to not chase algorithm updates. Google makes changes to its algorithm between 500 to 600 times per year! Chasing these updates or making drastic changes is not sustainable nor is it recommended. Stick to SEO best practises, create valuable content and provide a good user experience.
Speed Test
On the third day of SEO, we assure you that your website speed is more important than ever. Website visitors’ attention span is becoming shorter and shorter, so investing in a fast user experience not only prevents you from losing potential customers, but could also help you see a boost in organic rankings.
url-structure-matters
On the fourth day of SEO, we provide you with some technical insights as technical SEO is an important part of the foundation of your website. Google does not read underscores, so it is important to utilize dashes in your URL structures.
Write Smarter, Not Harder
On the fifth day of SEO, we want you to know that sometimes less is more. Duplication is not your friend in SEO. Before you create new content, consider what you have already written. New content should fill gaps. Sometimes updating older pages has more value than adding a new one.
Credit Check
On the sixth day of SEO, we want to remind you to check your online credibility. You know your business is legitimate, but you need to make sure this is clear to users and search engines. Ensure you business information, like the business name, phone number, physical address, and profiles of real employees are up to date on all your digital profiles.
Cookies
On the seventh day of SEO, we gift you with something sweet – cookies! As 3rd party cookies are rapidly being phased out to enhance user privacy, 1st party data is becoming increasingly more important. Ensure you have measurement framework in place that will allow you to continue to segment and analyze your website audiences.
Stay Focused
On the eighth day of SEO, we remind you to take a deep breath and stay focused. When writing content for your website, you should always make sure you have a focus keyword in mind. If you write without a focus, chances are the page won’t rank very well nor will it provide much value to your website.
Put Your Clients First
On the ninth day of SEO, we want you to take a step back from everything and remember what the most important aspect of your business is – your customers. Every website visitor (or potential customer) is online seeking information or is trying to complete a task. It is crucial that you have that pertinent information on your website to provide value and help your customers complete whatever task it is they’re trying to complete.
Be Responsive
On the tenth day of SEO, we remind you to always be responsive to your customers online. Responding to every review on your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) not only shows that you care about your customers, but it is also an important ranking factor for local SEO.
Each Page Should be a Gift
On the twelfth day of SEO, we remind you that every single page on your website should be a gift to potential or existing customers. Remove any clutter that doesn’t provide value and focus on the pages and content that truly mean something to your customers.
Happy Holidays from the Team at Ontario SEO
We hope that our 12 Days of SEO brought some joy and valuable insights to each of your days leading up to Christmas! If you have any questions or need help maneuvering your way around the ever-changing digital realm, reach out today! We help businesses just like yours create digital marketing strategies that gets you in front of customers no matter what day of the year.
