Title Tags are an important part of SEO and each site page should have a Title Tag in place. Search engines use your Title Tags as a signal to them of what the page is about.

In the early days of SEO, Title and Meta Tags were the primary way for Google to determine a site’s relevance to a certain subject. This allowed the search engines to scan a site and sort it with other sites that contain the same tags. In recent years, the impact of these tags has been diminished. Although they still play an important role for search engines to determine relevance to a subject, it is more important to consider the overall theme the site is trying to convey.

Properly optimized Title Tags can result in higher rankings, higher click-through rates and increased engagement when the page is shared through social channels. Improperly optimized Title Tags can result in rankings for obscure, or long-tailed, keywords. In other words, the Title Tags should focus around the targeted keywords.

Many websites try to “over optimize”, or do too much, by stuffing too many terms into the homepage of the site. A sound strategy is always to spread the keywords over multiple pages of the site. In this way, you create better overall robustness all around.

Over the past 5 years, Google has made aggressive efforts to refine its search engine to battle unscrupulous methods at manipulating rankings. Since the introduction of the major updates, Google has continually made improvements that aim and improving the search results. Understanding how these affect your site will guide our strategy and long-term sustainability. Here are some of the big ones that may have affected your site:

Panda (Introduced Feb 2011): This update is a search filter aimed to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google Search Results. Panda is an update that’s continually updated. When this happens, sites that may have previously been penalized may regain previous rankings if they’ve made the right changes. Panda may also catch sites that escaped before. A refresh also means “false positives” might get released.

Penguin (Introduced Apr 2012): This update was launched to help catch sites that were spamming the search results. Primarily, these sites were acquiring backlinks by buying them from link networks to help them boost their rankings. These sites suffered heavy penalties in the form of the loss of all of their rankings until the links were removed or disavowed. This can be a big issue for sites who may believe they were adhering to best practice for acquiring links, but were then hit with a penalty. In these cases, it’s extremely important to do a thorough audit of the current backlink profile before embarking on a new link campaign.

Hummingbird (Introduced Sept 2013): This update refocuses the attention of a search query. Up until this update was released, a search would be heavily focused on the actual keywords in the search only. This update helped Google understand the context of a search by ensuring the entire query – the whole sentence or conversation or meaning – is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal was to match pages better rather than just a few words.

Mobile Friendly Update (Introduced Apr 2015): Your site needs to be mobile friendly and responsive for it to ever have a chance of being ranked well. This is because Google released this algorithm update to boost sites who have a mobile version of the site. Sites who neglect to do this will see significantly decreased rankings and reduced traffic.

SEO is much more complicated these days. Spamming link directories will no longer get you rankings. A website’s authority is made up of many elements: trust rank, relevance and endorsement from websites who have demonstrated authority.

The real keyword traffic drivers are found in the Top 3 Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Key terms that rank on pages 4-10 have a lower importance. They still refer some traffic, but can increase value if focused on. Every position they move higher translates into increased Clicks and traffic for that term.

Positions 11-20 are the next closest targets, but we must choose the right terms to focus on. Each keyword has its own value and difficulty level, which depends solely on the domains/competitors in front of them, and how hard they are working to accomplish the same goals as you are.

It is important to remember though: it’s not merely about quantity. It matters more that the traffic any one term generates is of a high quality and, ultimately, converts. Some key terms have lower volume per month but are clearer high-conversion terms that are more likely to generate revenue. A mature business approach to SEO is a laser focus on the terms that matter and drive revenue. Smart SEO is about knowing when a term is out of reach with a given budget, as well as not wasting resources on goals that don’t drive revenue.

URL architecture and organization is also a very important part of SEO. Over the years URLs have been over-optimized by companies and SEO firms who do not understand the process. When done improperly, you will lose authority rather than gaining it.

And just to be clear, even if we decide the structure could be nameed and organized better, it is not always best to change it right away. Rankings on pages that are being renamed will be temporarily lost, and take time to bounce back, which will affect traffic and sales short term. As revenue is the most important focus of our strategies, these types of decisions require considerable evaluation.

Part of our keyword research process is to create a keyword map that includes suggested structure and naming for URLs. This allows us to give the search engines reasons to rank pages higher, by creating a key term hierarchy for your website.

Site speed, load time and W3C compliance are a few important onsite factors when optimizing a website to minimize bounce rate and maximizing conversion.  Analyzing and improving these elements is a key focus of ours.

At the start of the campaign, we look at the main factors that will affect your site speed, which ultimately affects your site’s ability to rank well and engage consumers.

• JavaScript Optimization
• HTML Optimization
• Minimizing DNS Lookups
• Remove and/or Compress CSS coding
• Browser Caching optimization
• Redirect Optimization
• Image Optimization

As a general rule, we like to see web pages load in 3 seconds or less. So, our recommendations and changes will aim for this target. We also recommend the use of Content Delivery Network (CDN) to assist with faster page load times.

In April 2015, Google released a major algorithm update that looks at various aspects of your site to determine if it is Mobile Friendly. Google announced they they will be placing increasing emphasis on this for the foreseeable future.

Every year, people spend more and more time on their mobile devices and tablets, but many websites still aren’t designed to account for different screen sizes and load times.

Mobile optimization takes a look at site design, site structure, page speed, and more to make sure you’re not inadvertently turning mobile visitors away.

Some things we look for include:

• Use of Flash
• Use of Pop-ups
• Design for larger fingers
• Optimized Title and Meta Descriptions
• Schema.org Data
• URL Optimization
• Dynamic Servicing

We optimize the home page, main category and product/service description pages and/or other core pages, improving and generating website authority.

Content volume and length of content on a page, uniqueness, relevance and freshness all factor into success.

Content Marketing:

After doing market research, we create optimized, sharable content and help secure opportunities to publish and promote it in your niche.

Our content marketing expands reach and drives qualified traffic to your site, improving both ranking authority and market penetration.

Website content needs to be refreshed and optimized on an ongoing basis. Your content-its design, delivery and reach-is a huge piece of success and largely helps determine how successful any Marketing campaign will be.

Search Engines really only count the amount of Referring Domains, not the total number of links. Too many links from any given domain is an indication of SPAM or a backlink profile that is need of extreme help.

In the past, the more links you had, the better. In today’s landscape, you don’t need to have as many links as your competitors to outrank them, you need quality links strategically placed and optimized.

One of the first things we’ll do is run a link analysis to assess the sites strength and authority, and also to see if you’ve been a victim of bad linking. We’ll scrub your link profile against the Penguin Update to check if there’s any indication of a penalty. In some cases, links need to be disavowed, removed, or cleaned up while concurrently building new links to take the place of any bad links. This can cause a temporary drop in rankings from the removal of bad links, but the recovery is always favorable in the long-run.