Digital Marketing News, Information and Updates – SEO4World Digital Marketing News, Trends, Tactics, Strategy & Updates
By Kerry Dean at Search Engine Land
We finally made it to April, folks! And I say this with more joy than usual, since March was acrazy month for SEO. If you made it through March without an email from Google or a penalty from Google or a drop in Google organic search traffic due to Panda updates or paidlink-related issues, you should give yourself a high five.
I mean, “Holy haberdashery, Batman!”. March 2012 was one for the history books! But now it’s all over. There’s nothing to be scared of any more. Pretty soon everything will be back to business as usual. Or will it? Dun..Dun.. Dunnnn!!!
All of the recent Google news leaves me wondering: Where the heck do we go from here? Panda 3.4 is out. Google has killed/is killing paid link networks.
Google also announced recently that they might rewrite your title tags if they choose to. Furthermore, Google is making it very clear that their priorities are all about Google+ and social media. I guess the only recourse we have now is to:
Wait a minute. That list hasn’t changed in years!
Obviously, I’m leaving some important items out of that list, but that is basically the same SEO game plan that we have been talking about for a while now. To me, the most ironic thing about the latest-and-greatest SEO news is that there are still a lot of massive e-commerce websites struggling with these traditional, old school SEO strategies.
For example, many of you reading this are with me in having worked with “big brands.” These websites have a multitude of visitors and customers. They get a ton of traffic. They pump a lot of money into marketing their brand.
Big brands are active in SEM and social media, and they have great products/services and, hopefully, stellar customer service. And business is looking pretty good for them right now. While some of these big brands are going about their business, doing the best they can to optimize their complex sites, plenty of these giants haven’t even heard of rel-author, schema.org, or other new SEO-related terms.
Many of these sites have not been “hit by Panda’. They have not been penalized for link building because they never attempted to buy links. Many of these sites are too big and too bureaucratic to get the buy-in for advanced SEO strategies, so they have never really done anything risky or aggressive (in terms of SEO). Or their platform makes it “impossible to change anything.” Or the person who managed SEO just left. The list of “or” options goes on and on. This is a common scenario for healthcare companies who don’t really bother with healthcare seo tactics when they really should! Now, this new software is in place, it’s probably making them realize that their original tactics were pretty shoddy and now they need to improve their whole site.
For whatever reason(s), some big brand websites are not succeeding at modern/advanced SEO strategies. And even if they are getting some of the modern-day SEO items implemented, they are failing at various aspects of traditional SEO as well. Of course, they all have an SEO agency of record…because ignoring SEO would obviously the dumbest thing ever, right?
Even if they are getting most of it right, I’m always surprised to find some SEO Easter eggs when I do some basic digging.
Personally, I love working with big brand websites because there is a massive potential for growth. And here’s why:
Now enough of the theoretical. Let’s take a look at what some real “big brand” retailers are missing the boat on SEO:
You could spend an hour looking at the top 10 brands in any category, and find similar, and even more SEO-detrimental issues. Now, to be fair, most of these sites are doing quite a lot right in terms of SEO. But, there are always a handful of changes that never get made. Why not take the time to get these basics in order?
A few other basics that are getting missed, and that you should check your own campaigns for:
To check these items on a regular basis, I use a variety of tools and even some manual checking. Here are a few of my go-to automated tools:
The other day, I told someone that I’m an SEO. And their response was, “Oh. I get a lot of emails from people like you.” Pretty funny, right? But it’s true.
A lot of the SEO items I’ve mentioned in this post are easy to check for, and a lot of industrious, entrepreneurial SEOs out there have written programs to analyze sites and then shoot out automated emails with details specific to website owners. It’s not my preference for lead generation, but it clearly got this guy’s attention. And it works in part because a lot of the SEO basics are still un-optimized or under-optimized – even on the complex websites for major brands.
If you keep the content fresh and different then it could help you to get the most out of SEO services. This includes things like blogger outreach services, which give your brand a more creative element and therefore, appealing to a wider audience, rather than just simply link building.
As we all struggle to keep up with the changes and shifts to our livelihoods. I know Google stole plenty of my time and patience during March. But, through the new opportunities and shifting tides, it is key to ensure your SEO basics are still implemented correctly. With a quick review to your sites, you may be surprised at the “little things” that need to be addressed. Often cleaning up a few of these basics will improve your rankings sitewide.
About The Author: Kerry Dean is Chief Traffic Officer at PMG, a full-service digital agency, where he directs all technical operations for the company, including the company’s SEO, social media, local search, reputation management, website architecture and usability, analytics and WordPress practices.