Search engine optimization has solidified its role as a requirement for any serious web marketing strategy. Driving organic traffic by developing thoughtful, original, and engaging content on your website continues to be one of the most sustainable ways to build long-term authority and web presence. But how effectively are you converting the traffic you receive from your SEO efforts? Are you considering the opportunities that SEO provides for moving a visitor through your online conversion funnel? If not, you may be missing out on potential sales or lead generation.

The First Impression Isn’t Your Homepage

It’s your search engine result listing. Blending experience and marketing flair into your optimized page descriptions and titles can do wonders for your click-through rate, even if you’re not in the top 3-5 results. Consider the end-result your trying to drive, because just jamming keyword rich phrases into the description may do a very poor job of describing your brand, value-prop, or even what the end-user should expect if they click-through. For one client who’s business relied on organic search traffic reaching their website and being prompted to call a 1-800 phone number, we were able to create a Phone Call Lead Conversion Rate of greater than 100% – yes, more people were calling than even reaching the site – simply by injecting their phone number directly into the page descriptions that are displayed in the search engine results. Will this drive incremental traffic from the phone number being a popular keyword phrase? Of course not, but since the end goal was driving phone-leads it’s what made sense. Google Webmaster’s recommendations for the past several months to increase search engine performance has been to integrate any schema.org based micro-data that makes sense.

The ABCs of Web Marketing

There are many more parallels between real world commerce and eCommerce than not, but for some reason when it comes to online commerce there is a tendency to throw out the rule book. Focusing on basics like differentiation can yield fantastic results. Recommendations directly from Google suggest incorporating differentiating facts about your online or brick & mortar business such as ‘Oldest Skate Shop in Philadelphia’ or ‘Free Shipping on Orders Over $100′. This allows you to entice users to click-through and capitalizing on the opportunity to strike their interest beyond keyword phrase relevance.

Develop Content Driven By Data

Track what works, and what doesn’t. Develop content targeted at buying behaviors anticipated from projecting the historical performance of your web assets. Align the search result listing meta information you provide with the conversion funnel established for that specific keyword phrase vertical. That way, you can use the search result listing itself to begin to warm the user to the experience that you’ll be providing on the other end of the result link – more importantly you’ll see increases in KPIs targeted for increased emphasis by Google (such as time on site, bounce rate, page views) because searchers will know what they’re getting into before they click.

From time to time we get approached with the question every search engine optimizer hates, “I have this website about X…how do I show up in Search Results?”. For starters, this is a ridiculously loaded question which we could spend an entire post dissecting, but for now it will suffice that it is usually followed by the answer “It depends…” and several follow-up questions:

1. Have You Completed General Best Practices for Your Website?
2. What Search Engines Would You Like to Perform In?
3. Do You Have Any Keyword Phrase Targets Identified?

If we even get to #3 with an answer, immediately the next question is – “Why?”.

Why have you identified that keyword phrase as a desirable SEO target? That’s typically when the conversation falls apart. Most people optimize for keywords they’ve qualitatively decided are ‘the best’ without any quantitative support or rationale.

How To Rank in Search

Really what you should be asking yourself is, “Why Do I Want to Rank Better in Search?”. This will help you identify how your business goals align with what you’re planning to do with your web marketing efforts. SEO is the means to an end, but if you haven’t decided to which ends you’d like to arrive – how will you even know when you get there? Once you have clearly defined objectives, companies like atomni can come to the table with the 3rd party industry data, search trends, and other analysis to provide keyword phrase targets & actionable directives that will achieve your business objectives by improving your search rank for those keyword phrases.

Big Secret…It’s All Computers!

If you’re not convinced at this point that computers are faster than you at computationally processing information, read a bit about Project Blue Gene and a fellow by the name of Moore (because they definitely are). That’s why search engines are so great, they collect data in seconds that it would take a human-being months to compile. A fundamental fact of this (which most SEO consultants would have you just as soon ignore) is that trying to game a system run by computers via analog ‘consulting’ or ‘strategy’ alone is a flawed approach doomed for mediocre results. To beat search engine algorithms you have to think like a computer then use computers to your advantage through custom scripts, data-mining, automation, and data churning to provide decision support at economies of scale otherwise unobtainable. This means the best SEO comes from the same type of people that are designing the search engine algorithms for Google – Computer Scientists – which is a big part of why atomni can deliver such sustainable organic results.

Search Engine Optimization and Positioning

Optimizing for search is something you’ll want to continually refine for several reasons, but mostly because search trends (how many people are searching which keyword phrases) will change – and you’ll always have more data to make better decisions. A good search optimization strategy should seek to create an ecosystem of rendering actionable campaign information from the various streams of data being collected. This ecosystem will allow you to systematically develop new content, expand your web footprint, and get more results from your domain ranked.

Philly is a Info-Tech Hotbed

The City of Brotherly love is brimming with technology start-ups, independent creative professions, & communities of tech-savy professionals. Being search engine optimization specialists for the last few years in Center City has been an enriching experience for atomni largely part to being able to work with a variety of talented independent contracting professionals and being surrounded by other great technology companies.

You Are What You Eat

With more than ten major universities and design colleges within 15 square miles including Drexel, Penn, University of the Arts, Villanova, & Temple – it’s easy to see how a well organized community could thrive in Philadelphia. We’ve worked with some of the best & brightest moving forward the frontier of organic optimization – focusing on understand and working with search trends, rather than attempting to ‘trick’ algorithms. Our proprietary SEO strategies & online visibility techniques have help our clients build their websites into business assets with tangible value. Whether you’re interested in targeting industry-verticals, geographies, or demographics we have a solution that will work for you.

Search Optimization Companies in Philadelphia

When you’re shopping for website optimization, it is important to have a good idea of what business goals you hope to obtain by optimizing for search. Instead of focusing on which keyword phrases you’d like to target in search, take a step back and define some higher-level objectives such as, ‘increase unique page views’, ‘achieve 5 contact forms submissions per day’, or ‘attribute 5 new customer conversions per quarter to the website’. Let the SEO Company you’re going to hire define the tactics – you define the mission. Be careful in hiring an individual SEO Consultant opposed to a reputable & established company if you do not have the technical vocabulary to manage them directly. Without the skillset to properly assert their work is accurate, complete, & effective you will have nothing with which to hold them accountable beyond good-faith and trust (and keep an eye out for SEO Credibility Red Flags).

Open Source Information

Organizations like TechnicallyPhilly and PhillyCHI foster a environment of information sharing that is rising all boats in Philly. The ecosystem approach to developing an industry like web marketing breeds a sustainable culture of professionals that can provide Silicon Valley quality service, locally, & for a fraction of the price. Even further, some self-help meet-ups cater to individuals or small-business owners learning their own tips & tricks to manage their own organic optimization efforts. This type of information sharing breaks down the traditional barriers associated with technology providers and their clients heightening the systemic intelligence of the region.

Developing Professional Communities

Places like Indy Hall in Northern Liberties provides top-quality space for independent contractors to work, meet, & collaborate on creative projects that span many web-enabled disciplines. These type of spaces allow for creative professionals to offer a high level of end value in comparison to cost as well as gain access to resources required for larger projects and extend their personal networks.

Bill Rowland is doing awesome stuff with SEO Grail Philadelphia as well, leveraging MeetUp.Com to host events to share domain knowledge about organic optimization techniques. This is a great way for SEO professionals from all experience levels to develop their craft.

The Inevitable SEO Lag

One of the most frustrating characteristics of developing quality organic traffic is that it takes time and resources. SEO campaigns require an initial investment of time and resources and can seam like a cost center, which makes it even more important to have trust in the professionals you’ve made responsible for converting those efforts into trackable and positive ROI. Establishing this trust is the single most difficult barrier to entry for any company seeking an SEO service provider. After a month or two of organic optimization doesn’t yield ten-fold results a client will sometimes get impatient with the “stay the course strategy” response. We’ve seen scenarios time and time again where companies leave potentially lucrative opportunities on the table because they could not bridge the trust gap with their provider. These credibility factors are meant as resource to better vet search optimization companies and to introspectively take measure of your own web marketing firm.

1. Proven Success

Any reputable search optimization company should be able to provide you specific information on a similar campaign where they’ve achieved their goals and delivered results. If a company proposing an SEO product, service, solution, or strategy can’t put in front of you clear & simple data on how it performs – do not hire them.

2. Technical Expertise

Make sure the SEO consultancy has a deep technical background including programming. The fact of the matter is search engines, search engine algorithms, & social media sites are all created and written by computer scientists – why not hire some of your own to figure out how to best rank for target keywords. It should be a red flag if any SEO company or consultant does not have a programming background or talented web developers involved at the strategic level of the project.

3. Industry-Vertical Experience

The best organic optimization is a meticulous process that is highly aligned with your specific product catalog, competitive search space, & industry differentiators. There is also a lot of initial research and keyboard legwork that goes into developing a cohesive search optimization strategy – so finding a company experienced within your industry vertical allows you to capitalize on their previous research and successes out of the gate. There is inevitably some trial & error involved in SEO – so capture this domain knowledge by hiring experience.

4. Ability to Scale & Grow

If your website optimization techniques exceed your wildest expectations – doubling or tripling online sales inside of 6 months – could this company or consultant keep up? Your expanding web business will require expertise in graphical design, online advertising, data tracking, analysis, and programming just to name a few. Will your provider be able to scale with you when their proposed strategy succeeds? Look for a company that offers a range of services & solutions within the web marketing spectrum so you can unify accountability across the board and simplify management of outsourced web marketing activities.

5. Does It Make Sense?

Buzzwords and acronyms are plentiful in the web marketing industry, be wary of any provider that use these quickly & without explanation – many players selling smoke & mirrors use this as a tactic to steamroll potential customers. By inflicting a technically superior tone to the dialog, they hope to drive a customer by instilling fear and unease. This should be another red flag – just because the marketing efforts are happening in a virtual space does not mean all logic virtually goes out the window. A solid holistic web optimization campaign should be easily understood without a Facebook PhD and trackable to the real value impact to your company and bottom line.

For more information on how atomni can help you succeed with your organic search campaign or search engine optimization strategy