How Much Should You Spend on SEO Services?

Nearly every business today must decide how much to spend on search engine optimization (SEO). This isn't an if question. Robust online marketing is imperative for survival in a web-driven world.

The question every business professional must ask is, "How much will we spend on SEO?" Keep reading for all the information you'll need to make that decision, plus some helpful tips on how SEO agencies work so you can be successful as you forge a crucial partnership with an online marketing firm.

SEO Payment Models

To understand the dollars and cents discussed below, you must understand payment models used by agencies. SEO agencies typically offer four main forms of services and payment:

• Monthly retainer: In this model, clients pay a set fee each month in exchange for an agreed-upon array of services. The monthly retainer is the most common payment model, because it provides the greatest ROI. Monthly retainer arrangements usually include regular analytics reports, on-site content improvements, press releases, link building,keyword research, and optimization.
• Contract services at fixed prices: Nearly all SEO agencies sell contract services. Often, before a client is ready to engage a monthly retainer, they will select contract services that they want to have completed. The services that an SEO agency offers are often advertised on their site, along with a price. A typical example of this is an SEO website audit which can help determine existing strengths and weaknesses in the client’s online presence, competitive analysis, as well as keywords that have the highest potential to return positive ROI.
• Project-based pricing: Project fees are similar to contract services with the exception that they are custom projects created specifically for a client. Pricing varies according to the project. For example, a local cupcake shop may ask an SEO agency to help them with theirlocal online marketing. The client decides that they want the agency to establish their social media accounts. The cupcake business and the SEO agency will decide on the scope and cost of the project.
• Hourly consulting: This familiar consulting model is an hourly fee in exchange for services or information.

Most SEO agencies use all of these payment models. Likewise, clients may work with an agency using more than one model. For example, a client may choose to enter into a monthly retainer, purchase a contract service, and engage in a special project with the agency, thus entering into three of the payment models.

Typical SEO Costs

So, what should you expect to pay? Here's a survey of the range of the costs according to the payment models described above.

• Monthly retainer: $750-5,000 per month. Within this range, the amount that a client pays depends on the size of their business and the extent of services provided by the agency. On the lower end of this spectrum are small SEO agencies that offer a limited range of services. On the upper range are businesses with greater needs working with full-service SEO agencies. Most businesses pay between $2,500 and $5,000 for a monthly retainer.
• Contract services at fixed prices: price variable. Businesses that are just testing the waters in SEO usually choose a contract service as an entry point. Typical contract services include things like SEO copywriting ($0.15-$0.50/word), site content audit ($500-$7,500), link profile audit ($500-$7,500), and social media site setup ($500-$3,000).
• Project-based pricing: price variable. Since there are a variety of projects, there is a wide range of prices. Most projects cost from $1,000 to $30,000.
• Hourly consulting rate: $100-300/hr. SEO consultants, whether individuals or agencies, usually charge between $100 and $300 per hour.

(Some of these figures are taken from a 2011 SEOmoz survey of 500 consultants and agencies.)

Things You Should Be Suspicious of

Any discussion of SEO agencies and pricing isn't complete without a few warnings. To help you guard against indiscriminate SEO agencies with unethical business practices, read and heed. Be suspicious of the following promises:

• Guarantees. SEO firms generally can't provide guarantees due to the constantly changing nature of the industry.
• Instant results. True, some SEO tactics can get "instant results" by gaming the system. Be warned that these can hurt you in the long run. Instant results often involve SEO practices that are against webmaster guidelines put out by search engines. Invariably, Google seeks out these techniques and penalizes them, resulting in lost rankings that can take months to recover.
• #1 spot on Google. If an agency promises you the number one spot on Google, it sounds great. Hopefully, you'll be able to get it. However, it's not something that a firm can promise to hand over to you.
• Costs lower than $750/month. When it comes to SEO, you aren't shopping for the lowest price; you're seeking the best level of service. Be wary of rock bottom prices or "unbelievable deals."
• Shady link building services. Link building is a crucial part of SEO. You can't have a highly-ranked site without inbound links. But there's a dark side of link building. Link trust is gaining importance to appear high in the rankings. Before you enter into an arrangement with an SEO agency for link building services, ensure that their link building services are ethical, white label services. You may even wish to ask them where they may be able to gain links for a business in your industry.

Things to Keep in Mind

As you begin shopping for SEO agencies and making your decision, be mindful of the following points:

• SEO takes time. A monthly retainer is best. Think of SEO as a long-term investment. Aggressive campaigns and major pushes may have their place, but the most enduring SEO results come from a long-term relationship. In SEW's Mark Jackson wrote, "The real value of SEO efforts are, generally, not realized in the first month(s) of the effort." It's true. SEOs don't wave a magic wand and get instant results. Instead, they perform extensive operations that will produce results months down the road.
• SEO changes, and your rankings will change, too. The field is full of competitors, and rankings rise and fall with the changing of algorithms and the entrance of new competitors. One-and-done SEO tricks simply don't work. It takes constant monitoring to keep your website ranking well and performing at top-notch levels.
• Not all SEO services are created equal. Again, SEO isn't about shopping around for the lowest prices. It's about finding the finest agency you can. Look for an SEO agency that defines its scope of services, and takes the time to educate you.
• SEO is important. Do it. The point of your website is to increase and/or improve your business. Unless people are finding your website, it's not even worth having one. The smart thing is to pay what it takes to keep your site findable by the people who are looking.
• Hiring an SEO agency is best. You may be thinking, "Can't I just do this SEO thing on my own?" A tiny percentage of business owners or professionals have the skill and savvy to do their own SEO. Even so, comprehensive SEO takes way more time than most business owners can afford. Even an employee who "knows a lot about SEO," will be hard-pressed to deliver the level of services and excellence found in a SEO agency. You'll rarely come out on top if you try to go it alone, and you'll never get the same level of ROI that you would with a competent SEO agency.

You Decide

For most businesses today, SEO is the highest ROI marketing effort. The benefits it provides exceed the value of other marketing approaches – direct mailing, broadcast advertising, online ads, etc.

No longer do businesses decide whether they need SEO services. Instead, they decide how much they're going to spend. As long as they choose a quality SEO agency, their decision will lead to incredible amounts of revenue.

You can decide how much that's worth to you.

5 Social Media Predictions for 2014

One of my favorite things to do this time of year -- in addition to spending the holidays with friends and family -- is to look back on the year that was and also look ahead to what the New Year holds in store.

When it comes to the state of social media, the past year could be summed up in a few words: real-time marketing, content, video and mobile. In a space that's continuously changing and technology that's advancing quickly, it can be a challenge to know where you should be spending your social-media efforts.

Understanding what's ahead can help overcome these frustrations. Here are my top five predictions for where we're heading in social media in 2014:

1. Look for a shift toward visual storytelling through short-form video. 
On my Inside Social Media podcast, we talk a lot about telling the story of your business through social media. It started toward the end of this year, but a shift toward short, concise videos that tell a deeper story than pictures will only become more important in 2014.

Platforms like Twitter's Vine app and Instagram's 15-second video make it incredibly easy to create and share this short-form content so take the time to not only understand how to use these platforms but also how users consume content on them.

2. Businesses will embrace the 'fandom.' 
I hadn't heard much of this term before I had Tom Fishman, MTV's vice president of content marketing and fan engagement, on the podcast. Fandom is essentially the sub-culture of raving fans that exist within your overall customer base. These are the fans that are going to do a lot of your marketing for you, the ones who will promote your brand to other people.

In the New Year, I think businesses will make a bigger effort to identify and embrace the fandom. Connecting with and giving these fans the tools to help them spread the word about your business will go a long way.

3. Google+ will continue to grow in size and importance. 
Google said that Google+ now has 300 million monthly active users. To put this in perspective, Facebook and Twitter have about 1.2 billion and 232 million monthly active users respectively. Not only has Google+ become a popular social platform but its integration with Google search results and Google Authorship makes it a no-brainer in 2014.

This means that being active on Google+, even a little bit, should improve the search engine optimization (SEO) for your business. Google+ is only going to become more mainstream in the New Year.

4. There will be a bigger focus on context. 

We've all heard the cry that businesses need to focus on creating more content and that "content is king." And, for the most part, I think businesses have started to embrace content marketing. But for 2014, I think the need to put out more content will become less important, in favor of focusing on and creating content that's contextually relevant to the social channels you're using.

Brands should start asking themselves, "How are people using a particular social channel?" and "What makes a channel unique?" Then they will create contextually relevant content based on that insight.

5. More businesses will get into paid advertising.
I don't think it's a secret that your Facebook fans are seeing less and less of your content. The recent changes to Facebook's News Feed algorithm -- the one that decides what people see and don't see in their News Feed -- has further limited the reach of most organic posts.

With so many brands using Facebook to market their business, paid advertising will need to be a critical part of their social strategy if they want their content seen by more of their fans.

In addition, Twitter is beefing up its paid advertising options with products like the recently announced "tailored audiences." Look for more ad products from Twitter as it creates ways to make more money now that it's a public company. If you're serious about reaching your tribe on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, paid ads will need to be part of your plan in 2014.

How to Explode Your Traffic and Branding with Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is something that many of us do, but would you consider it a strong point of your online marketing and branding? There are many different ways that blog commenting can work for building traffic to your site and building your brand in the process, but too many comments are looking for a quick link and using short cut methods that end up hurting their brand rather than helping it.

I run a decent amount of large blogs, which means I get to manage a lot of blog comments. This isn’t something I enjoy doing, as I get to deal with a lot of spam and waste time weeding out the good ones from the bad… however it has taught me a lot along the way. On one of my larger sites, BloggingTips.com, I created a set of blog commenting guidelines for my readers to follow. These rules are made up of the following:

• All comments must have a “real name” associated with the comment
• Your avatar picture should be of a real person and not blank/placeholder
• Comments need to provide value and not be a simple “nice post” message.

By setting guidelines you can expect better quality from the people who are already commenting on your site, while also potentially eliminating the ones that are wasting your time and doing drive-by spam comments as well.

The Benefits of Blog Commenting

When it comes to commenting on other blogs, there are many reasons why you should be doing this. Getting backlinks to your site, gaining exposure through your name and gravatar image, and also providing quality content are just three of the major benefits.

As beneficial as blog commenting might be, it is rare that you will find many top bloggers commenting on smaller blog posts. This usually isn’t because they don’t care, but instead of other obligations that take up most of their time.

One way that I have been able to relate with bloggers of all sizes is to make sure I take the time to comment on any blogs that mention my name or sites, in addition to responding to any interview requests that come my way as well. Yes, this does take up a lot of time, but it’s something I’ve always said that I would appreciate and act on.

This is especially appreciated by any new bloggers who are on the up and coming. It’s a thrill to see a big name commenting on your new baby, and it will be remembered for a long time coming.

Important note: I would definitely look at blog commenting from more of a “branding” concept versus trying to get new links and traffic to your sites. But if you are going to be focusing on blog commenting for traffic and links, be sure to follow those same guidelines I mentioned above and also provide unique, thoughtful comments that people will find value in. This will increase the chances of readers noticing  your comment and possibly clicking over to your site.

How to Find Great Blogs to Comment On

The next part of the process to exploding your traffic and branding through blog commenting is finding the right blogs to comment on. Obviously you are going to want to comment on blogs that are in your same niche, since this is the type of traffic you are going to want to bring back to your site.

The Technorati 100 is a great place to start and you can search through their site for blogs over a wide range of topics. I also recommend you take a look at my company’s list Brand 150, which is  made up of over 500 different blogs and uses a unique algorithm that ranks sites based on their social following and various site rankings.

No matter what reason you are leaving comments on blogs for, make sure you end up improving your online reputation versus destroying it.

Matt Cutts Implies Google Is Aware Of SEOs Bribing Bloggers

On Friday night, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts tweeted a link to a Gawker story named Shady Marketing Firms Are Still Quietly Bribing Bloggers. Matt said, “we’re taking action on hundreds of buyers, dozens of sites, & dozens of spammy writers,” in reference to that story.

It is hard to say if Google has taken action or is looking to take action in the near future against sites using this technique but it is clear, Google knows about it.

The technique is not about going to the site owner and selling links through the owner of the site. Instead, it is going directly to the reporter or blogger and getting them to “editorially” add links to sites without the site owner’s knowledge. It would be like one of you guys paying me to link to your site without the owner of this site knowing about that payment. You can read the dialog between the SEO who was doing the bribing and the blogger who outed them at Gawker.

Google’s Matt Cutts wrote they are “taking action on hundreds of buyers, dozens of sites, & dozens of spammy writers.” Now, this may be his way of frustrating spammers to break their spirits. Or it may be Google’s frequent manual actions on link sellers, buyers, networks and brokers.

Either way, when it comes to denying algorithm updates, Matt responded again saying“we try to avoid major algorithm updates near the holidays. But spamfighting always continues.”

This may imply that what webmasters saw on the 17th and 19th might be related to spamfighting efforts of Google?

The Progression of Anchor Text

Much like the SEO industry as a whole, strategies for anchor text are always changing. Make sure you are following anchor best text practices to maintain a natural looking backlink profile.

One of the most exciting things about being involved in the SEO industry is that it is always evolving. While the industry as a whole is always changing, so are the various individual parts that make up SEO. One aspect of SEO that has seen dramatic alterations over the years is anchor text strategy. As Google continues to update its search algorithm to create the most accurate SERPs possible, it is equally important that you update your anchor text strategy to ensure your site shows up in those SERPs.

Importance of Anchor Text

As mentioned above, it is important to utilize the correct anchor text strategy for your links. In some regards, the anchor text you use is just as significant to your link as the site it is published on. Not only will anchor text help determine the value of your links, but it will also shape how your backlink portfolio looks to Google. If you aren’t staying on top of anchor text best practices, the links you build could appear unnatural to Google and result in your site being penalized. Let’s take a look at how anchor text has progressed over time and discuss some anchor text best practices that you can utilize today.

Early Forms of Anchor Text

In the early stages of linking, most sites would simply link with an exact match URL as the anchor text. For example, a link to Biznology may look like this – www.biznology.com . This quickly changed with the emergence of Google as the value of links grew tremendously. People began to realize that they could game the system by flooding the web with links back to their site that used exact match anchor text for the keywords they wanted to rank for. However, as it does with most spam, Google came up with updates to their algorithm that punished sites using this tactic. Most notably, the Penguin update heavily penalized sites with large percentages of exact match anchor text and formed the strategies people use today.

Current Anchor Text Best Practices

Due to updates like Penguin, it has become clear what types of anchor text strategies should be pursued and which should be avoided. Exact match anchor text should be used sparingly and should only make up a small percentage of your backlink portfolio.

The rest of your portfolio should consist of a combination of things. Two common anchor text strategies involve branded anchor text (i.e. Biznology.com) and partial-match or long-tailed anchor text. Partial-match and long-tailed anchor text include a partial phrase or portion of the keyword or term you are trying to rank for rather than the exact term.

The use of “white noise” anchor text is another option that will help round out your backlink portfolio. White noise anchor text refers to links that have the anchor text “click here” or “his/her website” and are usually used around keywords or phrases in close proximity. These are the anchor text best practices that you should be employing so you can build a natural backlink profile that won’t get you penalized by Google.

The progression of anchor text is something that has developed and changed over a number of years. As Google continues to perfect their algorithm, anchor text strategy will no doubt continue to change. However, for now it is important to adhere to anchor text best practices to get the most out of your links and ensure you don’t appear to be gaming the system.

Easy on-page optimization tips

“What’s so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you’re constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that.” – Billy Crystal

Search engine optimization is a never-ending headache for many ecommerce entrepreneurs. Regular algorithmic changes with Google, Bing, and Yahoo can mean that the efforts you make today could be undone tomorrow, particularly if your SEO strategy is gimmicky and based on trying to “trick” the engines to liking you. Plus it seems that no matter what you do to improve your content and design, there is always something left that could still be done to make things more effective.

With the start of a new year right around the corner, though, it is a good time to sit down once again and take a look at your SEO strategy, particularly if you’re a solo entrepreneur that manages his or her own SEO efforts in-house.

The Holy Grail of SEO is high PageRank backlinks (i.e. inbound links from other websites to yours), but they are hard to get, are driven by quality content, and take months or years to culture. Creating quality, user-valued, brand-centered content should always be the cornerstone of your SEO efforts, but there are simple, easy on-page things that you can do to make your website’s pages more attractive to search engines.

Revisit Keyword Research

You’re likely already well aware of the important search keywords on which you would really like to rank strongly. Still, it never hurts to do a bit of fresh keyword research to insure that your list of target keywords is up to date.

It’s unrealistic to think that the vast majority of relatively small websites are going to rank well on thousands of keywords. It isn’t unrealistic, however, to rank well on several dozen keywords, particularly if many of them are not too competitive to start with. And just because a particular keyword isn’t all that competitive doesn’t mean that it isn’t lucrative.

For the longest time, Google offered a great, free keyword research tool – called (unsurprisingly) the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. You could use this tool even if you didn’t use AdWords. The replacement for this tool is the Google Keyword Planner, which is available under “Tools and Analysis” in your Google AdWords account.

Even a few minutes with a keyword research tool might be of value in focusing your attention on new opportunities for keyword “strategy,” whatever that might be.

The goal is to get together a list of anywhere from 100 to 300 keywords and key phrases that you believe are directly related to the products that you sell and that are descriptive of the sorts of things in your web store. Some of these will no doubt be “short tail” and generic (e.g. you sell garden hoses but want to rank on “gardening”) but most will be “longer tail” and more specific and oriented to particular products and categories (e.g. “expandable lightweight garden hoses”).

Formulate a Landing Page Strategy

From there, the next step is to build a simple spreadsheet with your targeted keywords in the first column, one keyword per row of the spreadsheet.

In the next column of the spreadsheet, go ahead and list the page on your website that should be the preferred landing page for someone who searches on that term.

Imagine that you sell birdhouses, for example. An important keyword for you might be “brass birdhouses,” in which the landing page for that term might be your category page for brass birdhouses. The term “cedar birdhouses,” by contrast, would be targeted to your category page for cedar birdhouses.

A more particular search like “small barn wood birdhouse” might target a particular product page that closely fits that description. Likewise, a branded search for a particular product (“Dunwood Classic Redwood Birdhouse”) should target that particular product page.

One implication of this exercise might be the discovery that a term that you think is important doesn’t have an appropriate landing page on your site. For example, imagine that your birdhouse web store currently only categorizes products by the materials from which they are made.

Nonetheless, imagine that you’re interested in targeting visitors who search according to the size of birdhouses (e.g. “large birdhouse,” or “small birdhouse”). In that case, you should consider creating a new set of product categories that correspond to the keywords that you care about. In addition to the value in terms of SEO, presenting your products in terms of the categories that consumers are considering can really influence conversion rates and time-on-site.

Another possible outcome of building this spreadsheet that might surprise you is that you find that you’re almost always targeting the home page of the site. Although it is tempting to want visitors to always come through the front door, the truth is that landing on a relevant interior page on the site is going to be more effective as a selling tool for many, many searches.

It’s also easier to optimize an interior page for a particular longer-tail search term compared to trying to optimize the home page for every term you care about. And optimizing interior pages on various related long-term search terms will have the added benefit of potentially raising the overall visibility of higher-level pages on broader term searches.

Optimizing Page Titles

Now it’s time to add a third column to your spreadsheet. Go ahead and type out the current page title for each website page that you have listed in your spreadsheet.

Page titles are important to search engines, and they are relatively easy to optimize. The question at this point is simple: Is the current page title adequate to your SEO goals, given that you’re trying to rank for that particular keyword?

Minimally the page title should be descriptive of the content of the page, and include usage of the exact keyword you’re targeting. For example, if you’re trying to get a category page to rank on the term “brass birdhouses” then the title of that page should include the term “brass birdhouses.”

Ideally, the term should also appear early in the title. “Brass Birdhouses for Your Feathered Friends” is going to be more effective than “Birds Love Brass Birdhouses” – though I doubt either of those page titles are all that great.

Lastly, take a look at the length of the page title. It’s tempting to use lots of words in the page title, but hold the length to 70 characters. Search engines will use your page titles in the search engine results page when they serve your page up as a result. But the engines will truncate the result if it goes more than 70 characters.

Good titles will be keyword-rich, but not keyword-stuffed, descriptive of the content on that page, under 70 characters, and encourage a user to click on that result, if it showed up on a search engine results page. Do yours?

Optimizing URLs

What goes for the page title often goes equally for the page’s URL. Although there is a debate about what impact dynamic URLs have on search engine results, the fact is that most web stores can control their URLs, and product and category pages that have simple static URLs are easier to optimize.

As with page titles, use of your critical keywords in the URL can have benefits. In fact, you can make a good case for using your page titles as, essentially, your URLs. For example, if your category page title is “Brass Birdhouses” because you’re targeting that keyword, you can make a case for the URL beingwww.thebirdhousestore.com/brass-birdhouses.html.

But don’t just go changing all your URLs on a whim. Unless you are developing a brand new website, those pages are likely already indexed by Google, Bing, and other search engines, and just changing the URL will be disastrous for your existing search engine rank on those pages (searchers clicking on search results will get “Error 404″ page not found errors).

You can change your URLs, but for every change you’re going to have to create a 301 redirect. Almost all web store builders have an easy built-in menu for doing this. This is a time-consuming process, but vital.

Furthermore, consider the fact that the value that a well-written URL brings is actually rather marginal, overall. If a page is ranking poorly and you’re trying to make it better, then this is a trick worth trying. But if a page already ranks well with the existing URL, it might be best to just leave it alone.

Optimizing Meta Data

Next comes the page meta data. From an SEO standpoint, the “easy fix” meta tag to be concerned about is the “description” tag.

In the next column on your spreadsheet, paste your existing description meta tags for each page on your website that you’re targeting.

You might be surprised to discover that pages that are critical to your SEO strategy are actually missing this meta tag completely. It’s easy to overlook adding that bit of meta data when you’re building out a site.

There isn’t a “trick” to writing good description tags that isn’t part of writing good page titles. Look at the descriptions as they are today. Do they use the keywords that you’re targeting for that page? Are those keywords used early in the description itself? Are the page descriptions actually descriptive of the content of the pages to which they are attached?

As with page titles, there are limits to what the search engines will display in terms of the search results snippets. Hold the complete meta description to no more than 156 characters, ideally, and get those keywords featured early in the description, as this can enhance click-through rate as well.

Lastly, just as page titles should be unique, so should page descriptions. Don’t use the same page descriptions for more than one page on the site. That should actually follow naturally from your overall strategy, as the keywords you’re targeting should also be different for different pages.

Optimizing Page Content

What goes for the other elements in your on-page SEO strategy, go equally for the actual page content on your site.

This likely will not end up as a column on your spreadsheet, but look at the pages that you’re targeting and ask yourself the same old question: Do your targeted keywords for each page actually show up on the pages themselves?

There are useful easy-to-implement strategies for calling a search engine’s attention to particular keywords on a given landing page. Simply using a keyword more than once is a strategy, though you should avoid “keyword stuffing” — the practice of using a particular keyword too much or in awkward ways that are clearly designed to “trick” a search engine but provide no user value.

Another strategy is to use the keyword on the page within the context of your H1 (header) tags, in essence, noting to the search engine that the keyword is in the page headline. As with page titles, use the keyword early in the headline, and don’t use more than one set of H1 tags on the page (that’s what H2 through H6 are for).

Beyond that, keep in mind that retail websites often suffer from the problem that category pages and product pages are image-heavy and text-light. This is good for the user, actually, but the search engines can’t do anything with a picture directly. The best that they can do is to rely on the images ALT tag, which should go with every picture.

Because you want your use of keywords to be proportional to the rest of the text on the page, this probably means that you’re going to want to do some writing. Try to craft at least 50 to 100 words worth of good, descriptive written content on every page of your site, including category pages. By doing this, you’re adding enough content overall that the keyword usage will be statistically proportional.

As an aside, but an important one, it’s tempting to rely on manufacturer’s product copy when considering what to put on a product page. From an SEO standpoint, however, this is almost always a mistake as that same copy will be used often across the web, leading Google and other search engines to regard your store as offering nothing particularly novel to the user in terms of content.

Beyond that, another strategy is to add some highlighting — such as bold or italics — to keywords. Don’t expect this to have much of a dramatic impact, but every little bit helps.

SEO Simplified For Today’s Business Leader

SEO in the Past

Take everything you have ever heard about SEO and chuck it!

Well maybe you don’t have to go that far, but here is the thing.

If you are looking to build a site that Google Loves and has you showing up on the first page every time, then maybe it is time for you to realize the rules have changed a little bit.

In the past search was impacted by one thing more than anything else.

Link Building.

It was Link Building efforts that kept SEO and PPC marketers focused because it was the quantity and more importantly the quality of links that was going to drive page rank up and therefore position in a Google Search.

After Link Building, SEO was heavily focused on formatting.

SEO Experts would turn their attention to using the keywords in the right header tags (H2, H3 ) and then splattering the keywords throughout the content and using italics, Bold and underline to further improve search rank.

Link Building is still very important, but some other factors have become immensely important and B2B Marketers need to take notice.

SEO Today: Quality Content, Socially Authoritative

One of the first questions clients always ask is about SEO. How do we drive SEO to be found on Google.

While the traditional SEO items I mention above are important, I usually take clients down a different route. This route covers two areas. Their content strategy and marketing efforts as well as their Social Media, Curating and Sharing strategy.

SEO and the Role of Content

First question, do you have a blog and do you keep up to date with quality content driven to answer your prospective clients most important questions about the solutions you offer?

If they say no, then I know we are starting at zero.

Even the most optimized B2B site if just a static products and services website will have a hard time growing and sustaining traffic.

Wondering just how important content is? Check out this Searchmetrics visual aid showing the content factors driving search.

In short, to improve in almost all of these areas you need more high quality content.

SEO and the Role of Social Media Signals

The second question I ask is, how does your organization use social media?

• Are you consistently sharing the content you are (or aren’t) creating across the platforms?
• Do you curate and share other useful content to build trust and relationships with potential clients interested in similar subject matter?
• Is your brand engaged and having conversations with readers in your target audience?

The purpose of this question is to basically find out one thing…

Is the brand Social and do they have an engaged community of any sort that shares content.

Because here is a less known secret of SEO that most B2B’s are failing to realize.

Social Sharing is a huge driver of SEO! Looking for proof? Check out this second study from Searchmetrics.

Notice anything here?

7 of the top 8 factors driving SEO are Social Sharing related and not traditional SEO drivers whatsoever!

Want SEO? Drive Content, Get Social

For companies asking the old how do we improve SEO question, the answer is simpler than you may think.

The challenge for businesses is that unlike in the past where the building process was more about following steps, grabbing
backlinks and properly formatting content, the rules have now changed.

If you want better SEO then you need to be creating more content, and driving it through social channels. It really is (or isn’t) that simple.

Looking to better understand what drives Social Sharing? Check out this great graphic from Marketing Charts.