Lander Academy: The 4 Phases of the SEO Process

The latest webinar edition of our Lander Academy has July Lander Academy has come and gone. Last Tuesday we had the pleasure of listening to SEO expert Aleyda Solis. We hope you enjoyed the webinar, but just in case you had a full schedule and couldn't attend, or maybe the phone rang and you got distracted and missed something, no worries, we got you covered!

In this blog post you’ll find the best moments of Aleyda’s presentation and in case you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, no biggie, you can watch the webinar in it’s entirety!

All throughout the year our Lander Academy has had to explain a lot of different practices and this time we decided to choose one of the most important topics for any brand and business: none other than SEO. And who more dedicated and knowledgeable than Aleyda Solis herself, a Moz Associate and International SEO at Seer Interactive, with lot’s of experience.

She explained to us the latest fundamentals and best practices regarding SEO. Aleyda’s a real specialist in the Search Engine Optimization field so let’s listen to what she has to teach us.

So If you’re a business owner, web developer, online marketer or just looking to grow your website’s conversions (sales, reservations, registrations) and achieve a high ROI this is the perfect Webinar for you to listen to.

Why should I work on my SEO?

First of all, maybe you’re wondering: Why should I invest my time, efforts and valuable resources on SEO?

Well Aleyda told us that good Search Visibility can help you to achieve any of your online goals, and will also help you strengthen your conversions, sales, registrations and result in a higher ROI. Search is currently one of the two most popular internet activities, and even more so, it’s actually a vital component of the online purchase process.

However, nowadays, it’s more complex and takes a lot more work to get the desired visibility, and this is because Google changes its search algorithm many times throughout one given year. While most of these changes are just minor adjustments, every few months, Google rolls out a “major” algorithmic update that affects search results in significant ways.

For search marketers, knowing the dates and times of these Google updates can help explain changes in rankings and also organic website traffic. You also need to keep in mind the Multi-device search and also Google Personalization.  

How Search Engine Work?

Aleyda explained to us in detail that we need to think about a consistent, long-term & integral SEO process strategy and that we can’t think of SEO as an isolated “one time only” tactic. She said that we need to change our thinking and understand and integrate SEO with other Marketing Activities as well.

However, while creating a really good SEO strategy we also need to understand how search engine works in it’s entirety. Google bases good SEO strategy on three important factors when it comes to ways it ranks websites: Popularity, Relevance and Crawlable Web Structure.

Popularity

What do you need to do to increase your popularity and why? Google will understand that your site is popular because of all of it’s incoming links, social mentions, citations and shares that it receives. Getting all of these shares and mentions will give you a higher authority, which basically translates to becoming Popular. So what’s the point of all this? Basically it means you need lots of people to start liking and sharing your webpage!

Relevance

Okey...well, my site is popular now so how can I get some relevance? Well, you need to also have some fresh and unique types of text, images, videos and structured data. You also, very importantly, need to make your Site Relevant for the Keyword you want to run it on.  

When Google tries to find out which sites are perfect and relevant for the search that people did while searching, Google will look for the Keyword and content of the sites that it has indexed.

Your pages need to talk about the topic people are searching for. This way Google can say “Hey, these are the right answers and also pages for the questions that the users were looking for” Voilà..! Google officially says that your website now has “relevance!”

So, once again, it’s really important to understand that you need to make your site relevant and popular to reach new ranking heights! But hold on! Just one final, important ingredient is still missing, let’s see it.

Crawlable Web Structure

We can create a lot of content, build a lot of links but all of this needs to be combined into a crawlable web structure. We’re talking about web search here and Google has to be able to identify with their search bots all of this content and authority and that’s why you need to have the following:

• Internal linking

• Mobile configuration

• Accessible URL organization

• Quick Page loading Speed

With these four combinations Google will be able to understand your website, the meaning of its content, and figure out exactly how all of it will be relevant for a specific topic. Google needs to see that you have a good amount of links, shares and also social mentions as well. You have to enable Google and give it what it wants so it can see that you have a higher authority.

Now that you understand exactly which factors are the main ones that affect Google searches and why it ranks you higher or not, you need to follow an SEO Process that has its specific phases. Let’s take a closer look at them below.

How to Improve and Grow your Site Search Visibility

Aleyda explained that you’re not gonna shoot directly to the top tier of ranking from just one day to the next. If you have never worked in an SEO strategy in your entire life, it’s gonna take some time, research and practice. That’s why she showed us a proven 4 step process that will help you formulate your own SEO strategy and get you started.

First of all you need to know which keyword combinations are good for you to use. Use these keywords correctly and sprinkle them throughout your content in a user-friendly kind of way. This is also the point when you need to step back and consider all the best practices we mentioned before in this article. Make your site Crawlable, Indexable and accessible.  

Now we need to make sure that your entire web structure is not only relevant but also popular, and increase your site's authority. And finally, the last step you need to consider, you must measure your SEO efforts, because you need to know exactly what you’re doing right or also possibly wrong, and be able to know what processes to change in your SEO strategy.

If you have never considered or created an SEO Process before, this will be very useful for you to optimize your strategy and get exactly the results that you are looking for.

The SEO Process

Let’s see what to do in each step.

1. Develop a keyword research

• Identify relevant & high/medium search volume keywords

• Prioritize certain keywords that you have better rankings with

• Take into consideration the level of competition for each keyword

2. Optimize your site

• Map your keywords to a hierarchically organized URL structure

• Create a crawlable web organization with consistent internal linking

• Make each one of your pages relevant for the targeted keyword

• Help Google understand your content meaning using a structured markup

• If you‘re a local business create a Google+ page for better local & maps results visibility

• Make your pages mobile friendly with a responsive design or mobile targeted website

3. Grow your site authority

• Incoming links, mentions and shares define your popularity

• Beware of Google’s guidelines against link schemes, penalizations & link disavowing

• Start by understanding how popular you are compared to your competitors

• Which is the most shared content of your competitors and where it is shared

• Identify audience influencers and who they are: from communities, blogs to social power users

• Make your site easily sharable: from social buttons to active presence in the platforms where your audience is.

• Track all of your link building actions and identify which works better with your audience to replicate & scale

4. Measure your SEO results

• Make a plan for all of your SEO related activities, with times, resources, KPIs & goals

• Identify all of the SEO project related costs and your break-even point to achieve a positive ROI

• Follow-up with the SEO activities KPIs & goals frequently.

• Review the advancement in ranking, Traffic & conversions over time.

• Optimize & expand your own process to make sure you achieve a positive SEO, ROI over time.

• Never forget your ultimate SEO goal and make sure you do everything possible to achieve it.

Now you can start with your own SEO! But remember it’s an interactive process and you need to test exactly what works better in your specific case.

Bump-up your SEO rankings with these landing pages

Aleyda’s Presentation

As we promised here you can find Aleyda’s presentation in case you missed something and you want to write down the most important part for you and your SEO strategy!

Webinar Recording

And if you’re not one of those who like reading, here you can find the whole Webinar. Listen to Aleyda Solis, enjoyed and learn all about the SEO Fundamentals. Enjoy it!

We hope our latest Webinar was useful for you and for your SEO Strategy! We want to see you again in our next Lander Academy. Stay tuned to see which topic we will teach this time!