SEO - The Ultimate Guide to Organic Marketing

SEO has long been the spicy topic to divert real, organic traffic to your website. No marketing conversation goes without bringing SEO to the table. But what is it exactly? What makes Search Engine Optimization so diverse and unique that it’s always playing a factor – one way or the other – in your organic marketing strategies on digital media?

Apparently, Search Engine Optimization is a metaphor for bringing your website rankings up on search engines. But the term is more than just that! It’s diverse. 

It’s about utilizing the channel synergies of various mediums such as email marketing, social media, and other assisting sources. Marketing experts, who have long been into the business realize the benefits of combining on-page SEO, off-page SEO, paid marketing, social media, email marketing, and more.

Also, in this case, there is no definite guide provided by Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other major search engines. As a digital platform owner, you have to figure these things out on your own. As you go along, you find ways and hacks to build up your organic rankings through SEO. However, this could take a while if you are new in the business and looking to get a head-start.

With 2020 right around the corner, here’s a detailed guide for you – based on crisp and precise steps – to help you kick-start your organic marketing campaigns:

Analyze – Build an SEO Strategy

For starters, you have to observe your business with a keen eye, what is it about? How other businesses like yours are performing in the market? What are some of the key factors driving their website rankings up?

Whether it is an accurate implementation of visual search, the synergy of YouTube and Social Media, accurate keyword targeting, or adding backlinks and popping snippet baits to your website, there’s a lot that you could know. 

The aim of analyzing your business and market shouldn’t be to implement everything right away. Instead, observe, analyze, and devise a strategy within your resources. Only very few people have the resources to put each technique to use right away. Therefore, the key is to build a basic, yet effective strategy and initiate the process. This will eventually lead your website to top-rankings, by utilizing one medium at a time. 

Keyword Research

Researching appropriate keywords is one of the basic, vital, and crucial tasks for an effective SEO strategy. You must be well-aware of your niche and make use of proper tools to detect proper keywords. Keywords are the phrases that people would type in search engines when looking up for something particular. 

For example, a person who is looking for boat rentals in Havana may search “Rent a boat in Havana.” Therefore, “Rent a boat in Havana” is a keyword that must be thoroughly and meaningfully distributed on your website in order for your website to show up in the top results of search engines.

Moreover, marketers and website owners who want their websites to show up on the first page of Google, make use of various keyword targeting techniques. In other words, a reasonable and sensible SEO strategy always includes the utilization of smart keywords.

Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO – Save Your Website From Being Penalized!

Black Hat SEO is basically a set of unethical practices that can improve rankings of a website in search engine results. These practices should be highly opposed because while they may get you to the top of SERP in a short time, they’re also a perfectly good reason for search engines to ban your website. 

If you need to find out which practices are unethical, you can visit Google’s Webmaster Guidelines page. 

On the other hand, White Hat SEO is a set of ethical practices that sensible marketers use to get their websites to the top of SERP. White Hat SEO is about sticking to the guidelines and rules provided by search engines – and honestly speaking, you want to be on good terms with google!

You can do this by:

• Making relevant, great quality content

• Generating great keyword targeting campaigns

• Link building

On-page SEO vs Off-page SEO

On-page SEO is the website optimization rules that a website owner has to follow. This includes the website containing meaningful content, the right keywords scattered throughout, and following some rules for maintaining the quality of content.

Some rules for maintaining the quality of content may include external and internal URLs, Image optimization, structured data, meta tags, and keyword-rich headings.

On the contrary, off-page SEO covers all the activities you do to improve your SEO rankings by getting backlinks from other websites. Website owners normally do this by assisting their websites with social media pages, YouTube channels, Email Marketing, and collaborating with niche influencers. 

Done With The SEO Basics? – Time To Consider Some Details!

SEO can be a diverse area to cover and no one can know the ultimate answer. However, here are some of the most critical factors to maintain SEO by 2019:

• The content on your website should be unique, fresh, and quality-centered. 

• Always design your strategies while keeping the user intent in mind. After all, they are the ones selecting effective keywords.

• Make sure the external and internal links on your webpages are intact.

• Check the website’s cross-platform compatibility – the higher the compatibility, the better.

• Search engines also value your website’s efficiency and speed – find a good hosting!

• Your website must have a reasonable quantity of content, so users have an opportunity to crawl through your webpages. 

• Webpage layout, social sharing, topical authority, and domain age are some additional factors responsible for rankings.

How And Why Do People Use Search Engines?

Before summing up, let’s look at your potentially number one priority – the people using search engines. Normally, when people turn to Google or other search engines, they’re looking for a solution to a problem. This problem can range from finding the meaning of a word to finding the meaning of the universe. But the key here is to look at how users search for a solution.

They are not always going to use perfect grammar or phrases but search engines will still show them accurate results. This can only be done if the websites have smartly optimized their content, have secretly targeted keywords, making the content on their websites still just as meaningful.

Final Advice 

Now that you have an ultimate guide to kick-start your organic marketing campaign, here’s a bit of advice that should go a long way:

In order to correctly evolve and to get the desired results, you always have to keep experimenting with the ethical set of rules. Sooner or later, something will click and it’ll make your organic audience flow!

Here’s What You Need to Know About Meta Description Length

When working with our marketing customers at Joseph Studios, we try our best not to geek out about too much of the nitty-gritty behind the scenes. We do, however, like to keep them in the know about the different tactics we are using to keep them on top and ahead of their competitors in a way that they can easily understand. This brings us to the importance of meta descriptions and how they can help leverage descriptions to achieve better rankings. 

Remember – I promise not to geek out on this.

What is a meta description?

The results of a keyword search provide a long list of results or “hits.” Each hit has a meta title and a link to get to the page. Below is a snippet from the content on that page to give you a taste of what’s to come and a look into how it relates to the keywords in your search. The goal is for this tiny bit of information to be “enough” to attract the searcher to your website to read more. How exactly is that accomplished? Read on, for we’re about to describe this meta description strategy for you.

Does a meta description help SEO at all?

For my best “in a nutshell” description, search engine optimization (SEO) is achieved through a combination of the content and activities (visits and duration of visit) on your website. Google has an algorithm taking all of this into account, and that is what determines your ranking on those search results. 

The meta description in and of itself does nothing to secure your place in the line of search results ***except*** be the right description to get the attention of the searcher to click through to your website. It is the clicking through, and their browsing around that gives your website activity a bump. The meta description just got them there in the first place, so there IS value in that meta description!

So by people clicking through to your site, Google’s algorithm is noticing this and taking note of their clicking and the search phrase. Google is learning and making those connections between the query and your content. This association will be matched to future queries, making your website content a legit listing when Google gets another similar search. This action is what moves your content and your company ranking up higher on the list each time this occurs. Isn’t artificial intelligence awesome?

While Google is king for algorithms, other search engines work in similar ways, making those connections between your website content and click-through actions from every search query that occurs. With this in mind, you want to make sure that meta description has valuable information to grab readers’ attention and want to learn more.

What is the ideal meta description length?

The easy answer to this one is a meta description that can be read entirely. Officially, a meta description “can” be up to around 300 characters. That doesn’t mean that all 300 characters are seen by those searching. For instance, a search conducted by a tablet or phone will see far less than a search from a PC. This makes your available characters to get your point across on that list of hits much smaller. Try to get your meta description length down to about 120 characters. We say this because that is the number of characters that will display on a mobile device and 58% of all searches come from mobile devices. A tablet can see around 150 characters. 

What about other search engines?

No disrespect to the makers of search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and the others, but you always hear about Google’s search engine, ratings, and algorithms. These other search engines do have their own ranking means and algorithms, as well. Google has managed to be the king of all search engines, with 90% of all search volume conducted on Google above all others.  When it comes to meta description length, Bing and Yahoo can hold around 168 characters on a desktop.

With this in mind, you should resist the urge to take up all 300 characters for your meta description with 42% of those viewing unable to see it all. If the first 120 characters don’t make sense, they can pass you over and never even look.  If you can keep your meta description to a meaningful 120 characters for a mobile device, your meta description is ultimately viewable any search engine and any device. This will help with more successful click-throughs creating a positive impact on your SEO.

Focus on your audience

Now that you understand that the meta description is to attract live humans instead of appeasing algorithms, concentrate on your audience without the stress of fitting in those keywords in such a short space. Give your audience an accurate description of the content they will find on your page. Think of it as a tiny sales pitch that your website is just what they’ve been looking for in their search.

Think of three words when writing your meta descriptions: short, sweet, and useful. Your goal is now solely focused on your audience.

Check your meta description length before posting

Now, before you put a finger to the screen counting characters, there are tools to do this much easier than that! First of all, you can do the same on Google Docs or MS Word on the bottom of the screen (if you didn’t know that already). 

Check with your website’s content management system for a tool. There may be a perfect plugin for that. WordPress, for example, has the Yoast plugin. Yoast enables you to update the meta title, meta description, and your URL slug to the keywords and content. Other platforms such as Wix may require you to edit these details through the HTML code directly. It’s worth a look around to see if there is a tool out there for you.

Here are a few sites for free meta description analysis for those of you not using Yoast. 

• EZ Local
• SEOMoFo
• Spotibo

Just like all of your content, you are looking to connect with your audience, and it starts with the meta description to get their attention. The rest is for you to shine with their undivided attention!