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Search Engine Optimization & Marketing

Build it (right), and they will come

A lot has changed with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) over the years, but two things remain constant:

  • We all want to improve the volume and quality of our website traffic
  • There is no 'silver bullet' to automatically dominate search results

Although each situation is different, here are a few SEO tips that apply across the board:

Write for people first, not SEO algorithms

Too frequently, people write website content trying to figure out what words and phrases will 'score the most points' with search engines.  Instead, focus on writing content that readers will find useful, interesting, informative and/or entertaining.  If you do, readers will interact with you via social media, buy your product and/or talk about your company and/or products with other people to help build traffic to your site. Coincidentally, copy that is written for humans first typically will also score well with search engines. 

Use long keywords and phrases

To improve search results, optimize your site by utilizing longer phrases. The shorter or more general the phrase, the more competition there is and if you succeed in getting traffic for a general term, it is probably not quality visits. For example, 'garden' 

      • BAD: Plants
      • LESS BAD: Native Plants
      • BETTER: North Carolina Native Plants
      • BEST: Native Flowering Shrubs in North Carolina

(Slow) Speed Kills

Starting in 2010, Google started factoring in how quickly a page finishing loading into their search ranking. Since then, it has only become more important. We spend a lot of time convincing our customers not to display every product or plant they sell on a particular page. Similarly, having a lot of complicated calculations to determine which products to show will also slow down the page load. If your pages are not loading quickly, two or more of four things will happen, and they're all bad. 

  • Your site will be penalized by search engines and will not perform as well in search results.
  • The visitor will leave your site straight away
  • The visitor sill suffer through for a bit and then leave and not come back
  • The visitor will complain about your site either via Social Media or in the real-world or both!

Also, each page of your site will load at different speeds due to many factors including programming, content, image size, etc. There are a number of free testing tools you can use to test page load speeds, for  example:

Be Popular

Another important factor to good search results is site ‘popularity’ which equates to the number of quality[1] sites that link to your site. 

A good way to get additional links to your site is to issue press releases to trade publications and local news providers.

Be Social (Especially if you are B2C)

Using platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can be great ways to drive traffic to your site. Regular posts written to benefit your audience with links to corresponding information or products will help increase site traffic and ultimately help improve your SEO results.

How We Can Help

We offer EXISTING customers four general options:

  • Quick Tune Up: We will focus on 3-5 keyword phrases provided by you. This typically costs anywhere from $500 to $1,000.
  • SEO Plan Development: We will interview key people in your organization to determine your top 3 competitors and to understand which products and services are most critical to optimize your site for. You can then either implement the plan yourself, or Clarity Connect can do the majority of the work, or we can work together to implement it. Creating the plan typically ranges from $900 to $1,500.
  • Plan Implementation: Costs to implement the SEO plan fee will vary dramatically depending on the number keywords/phrases you would like to have your site optimized for and how much work you do vs. Clarity. Once the plan is developed, we will review it with you and from there we can develop a custom implementation proposal for you. For ROUGH budgeting, implementation plans can run from $2,000 to $4,000.
  • Routine Maintenance: We will review your site statistics, competition, and more and will then tweak your site based on those findings. Depending on the size of your site and SEO goals, the routine maintenance will typically be from 1 to 5 hours per month and is billable at $175/hour.

It Takes Time

It is very important to be patient with SEO plan implementations. Making a good change today does NOT equal an improvement tomorrow or even in 5 days. Plan implementations typically take 2 to 4 months. Improvements in search results are incremental and small.

No Guarantees

The only guarantee we can make is we know what we're doing and we will do the right things to try to help improve your search results, but there are no guarantees that you will be on page one let alone at the top of page one. It is also worth noting that many companies have an on-going SEO plan and are continually acting and reacting to what their competition is doing and to changes in the algorithms used to determine search rank.

Please note, we only perform SEO services for our web customers.

If you're interested in our service, please contact us.

[1] A link from a site like CNN.com is worth much, much more than a link from the local donut shop.