Stephen Bavister - Managing Director at Lexis Click started by stating that an effective website should be easy to find, regularly recommended, easy to use and returnable. We absolutely agree, especially in the case of our client brands. Your website is often the first impression of your brand for your consumers and the key is to encourage engagement as you are with interactive and theatrical retail marketing campaigns. Do an honest user experience audit of your website. Start with consumer behavior motivation and track their journey. Are your products easy to find? Yes? How about on a mobile, or tablet? Are there clear social calls to action? Is your blog relevant to your consumers? Does it add value by giving them information first or offering incentives such as special offers or range previews? So let's start at the basics, Stephen spoke about bad SEO practices such as meta keywords, keyword spamming, manual submissions and poor link building. How many of you still use these lazy and outdated techniques in the hope of a prime Google Page 1 listing? Google's updates have changed the rules of SEO completely and for the better. Searching is now personalised based on context and vocal phrasing, which delivers accurate and useful results. What we present on our website contributes to the Google user experience and this is not something that Google takes lightly. In order to ensure successful SEO, your website should have high quality and share-able content, without duplicate content, and removal of all poor quality back links.
But there is more to the story than just content. Search has changed and Google glasses are set to further change the way we search. Key words have been replaced by phrases and questions which Google then translates into personalised semantic listings. A great way to utilise this change is to answer key search questions within your blog. We often use blog posts to tackle an industry or consumer challenge, so ensure that you write the copy in a more targeted way to improve your SEO. Did you know that websites with a blog receive 55% more traffic than those without? Ensure that you own and regularly update the Google local listings for your business and include opening hours, event times or other relevant content that will enhance the consumer search experience. Page optimisation is really important to your SEO. Stephen advised that the perfect page optimisation should have a H1 headline, an image with the appropriate search term as the file name, no more than four scattered keywords and a relevant URL structure for the page. Throughout your website you should complete a technical audit and SWOT analysis and test page loading times as Google penalises poor user experience. Ensure that your page has clear calls to action and can answer Who, What and Why easily, with consistent next clicks and content that matches the user's intent. Engaging content is also vital to the user experience, providing downloadable content or media such as video that links to YouTube (the second largest search engine) are really effective methods.
Finally social media interaction is one of the key ways that Google judges your content. Google+ is crawled and indexed in real time and author searches utilise your Google+ circles and profile image. Your website should be updated regularly and consistently, with clear social media page links to encourage sharing. Provide context on your landing page such as contact details, menus and offers. Segment your traffic by topics and track their journey through your website on all platforms. Consider your target market, how do they search, what are they looking for and build your content strategy from there. Following these tips should set you on the right path to great SEO, that enhances you innovative and engaging retail marketing campaigns.Top tips from Improve your SEO in 2014:
1. Test your website across all platforms and with user experience in mind.
2. Is your content relevant? Does it answer key user search questions? Does it add value to the user?
3. Explore page optimisation for more effective SEO.
4. Be social! Ensure your content is updated consistently and is easy to share.
5. Make sure you have claimed and regularly update your Google local pages, as this is often the first thing users find in the search listings.
Improve your SEO in 2014 was interesting and added new perspectives to the SEO debate. The team were friendly and the content was interactive.
Maria Parker-Harris
Group marketing Co-ordinator
The SPS Group
www.thespsgroup.co.uk
#contentmarketing #digital #digital marketing #Google #search #retailmarketing #social media #thespsgroup #SEO
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