We’ve always said here at PalmettoSoft that conducting an effective Charleston SEO campaign is very complicated. After all, if it were something that you could do with great success after reading a quick how-to guide, there would be no market for companies like ours that handle the many daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks that are required to help a website be effective on the search results pages. That’s not to say, though, that there is nothing you can do, even as a relatively inexperienced website owner, to help your website perform well with the search engines. A great starting point is to avoid these four very common “no-nos” in Charleston SEO:
Listen now: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:36 — 5MB)
1. Overlooking Page Titles and Descriptions
Most website builders, even first-time ones, don’t need to be reminded to make their home page content look great. They don’t even need to be told about the importance of providing clear ways to get in touch directly with the company through prominently displayed phone numbers and email options. But the page titles and descriptions often get overlooked because the average visitor to the website doesn’t even see them. Thus the entries for the web pages on the search results pages include defaults, like “Home” for the page title and the first dozen or so words on the page for the page description. Always be sure to create a keyword-rich, descriptive title and a powerful, inviting, also keyword-rich page description for every one of your website’s pages.
2. Thinking Simplistically About Keywords
Part of Charleston SEO being complex is the networking nature of keyword optimization. You can’t just repeat the keyword phrase “cheap mattresses” over and over on your home page and expect to win the top spot on the results pages, even for that specific search keyword. You need to think about the other commonly searched phrases related to it and turn your website into a network of important related keywords. And don’t forget about location names!
3. Thinking Simplistically About Authoritative Content
If you’ve looked into Charleston SEO tips to see what you should be doing for your website, you are probably planning to maintain a blog. But we have some bad news for you: in today’s online landscape, just publishing authoritative, interesting, and valuable content on your on-page blog isn’t enough to put your company ahead on the search results pages. You also need to be reaching people on the social media websites, most notably Facebook. And the more you publish authoritative articles, case studies, white papers, and press releases on respected websites, the more you will benefit by directing readers to your website, and also by generating important links back to your site, which Google and the other search engines rely on to assess website value.
4. Taking a “One-Time Project” Approach to Charleston SEO
You’ll probably feel exhausted after building a website, optimizing page titles and descriptions, carefully building a network of related keyword phrases, and publishing a large amount of informative content around the Internet to link back to your website. More bad news, though: you can’t just do it one time and then rest for the next few years, enjoying great rankings on the search results pages! You need to constantly analyze the visitor metrics for your website, seeing what is working and what isn’t. You need to refresh the high-quality content on both your blog and your external publishing partners on a frequent basis so that people have good reasons to revisit your website. And of course, you need to be up to date on the latest changes to keyword search technology and adjust your campaign to reflect those changes for the best results possible.
We warned you that Charleston SEO was a complicated process! Fortunately, the team at PalmettoSoft has a “well-oiled machine” in place to accomplish all of these tasks for your website with minimal effort on your part. We would love to audit your website, suggest a plan to optimize it for great performance on the search results pages, and then continue to monitor your website and publish high-quality content on social media, external websites, and your blog in order to keep visitors coming back for more. Contact us today to get started!