However, the SEO landscape is constantly changing as search engines like Google try to stay one step ahead of the curve to weedle out the poor quality sites.
Do you struggle to know if you are successfully maximizing your SEO investment and staying up to date with all of the new changes?
Are you worried about how to continue to reach a large number of clients and how to ensure that the worth of your website and services is recognised?
We have put together this useful guide to help you understand the hierarchy of web presence of optimisation. Keep reading if you want to know more.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, often referred to as SEO, is the practice of making improvements to your website and content in order to get more, high quality traffic to the site.
This is organic, unpaid traffic as opposed to paid traffic or direct traffic.
Many search engines, but especially Google, have a complex and strict set of rules and requirements in order to rank websites highly and feature them on the first page of the search results.
They use these requirements to create the algorithm used to rank websites.
These requirements evolve and change over time as website owners learn how to work them to their advantage and Google gets savvy to the methods used to trick the search engine into featuring unworthy sites.
They even keep an eye out for websites that seem suspiciously ‘over optimized’.
Whatever changes happen in the world of SEO, there are two things that you need to keep in mind.
The first is that SEO isn’t going anywhere- it may change and develop, but it will remain the dominating factor in web development for years to come.
The second, is the changes to SEO performance and measurement has to change- if it didn’t then it would become redundant over time.
Search engines need to be able to find the most relevant, trustworthy and useful content, and that requires constant evolution and adaptation.
Although a lot has changed, two aspects of SEO remain certain:
What Is The Hierarchy Of Web Presence Optimization?
The hierarchy of web presence optimization is a theory based on the idea of fundamental requirements for search engine success.
By presenting these requirements as a pyramid style diagram it makes it easier for web owners to come up with a strategy for achieving organic search engine success.
The hierarchy of web presence optimization has five different levels or tiers.
Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation
The bottom tier, so arguably the most important as it is the base of the pyramid, is Technical SEO fundamentals.
This provides the foundation for your web presence which will help to boost the efforts you make in the other tiers of the pyramid.
You need to ensure that your web presence is easy to identify and index and has a strong infrastructure. Here are some methods you can use to ensure this:
Cross Referencing – Cross reference your website or blog to relevant social media sites and sharing sites. Ensure that there are social media icons to enable easy sharing of content.
Backlinking – Establish back links to your site from relevant and respected sources.
Load Time – Keep your web page load time low to ensure that this doesn’t negatively impact your ranking.
Google Places – Set up a Google Places listing for your website.
Housekeeping – Set up 301 redirects, title tags, sitemaps and other housekeeping.
There are lots of other things that you can do to build a solid foundation for your web presence, and it will change as the Google algorithm evolves.
Keyword Research And Competitive Research
The next tier in the pyramid is research into keywords and competitor sites. This relates to the content that you will feature on your website.
Google wants to see relevant keywords being used in your content, but each relevant keyword will also be used by other websites.
This means that there is a lot of competition for your content to be ranked highly.
The higher up the rankings you climb, the more you will be able to go for the most sought after and competitive keywords.
There is no point targeting them initially as your ranking will be too low – you will be setting yourself up to fail.
You need to do plenty of research to get a good understanding of your competitors for the various keyword groups so you can understand where to pitch yourself.
This is a very important level of the web presence optimisation hierarchy that should not be rushed.
Once you have a well researched list of keywords, you can move on to the next tier.
You should put a lot of effort into this, as it can be a real game changer when it comes to your organic traffic.
It takes into account the various search engines and their algorithms, organic searches, social media impact, and traditional content marketing.
There are three main pillars to optimized content marketing:
Freshness – Google clearly favors fresh content such as press releases, news, reports on events, case studies, and new blog posts.
Relevance – Your content needs to be relevant to rank highly. This means it needs to be optimized with keywords, it needs to be reliable with good backlinks and trusted sources.
Social Media – Relationships developed through social media can help to prove and demonstrate the relevance of your website and your content. Having a strong social media presence can help you rank much higher. Make sure you are sharing the content publicly in Google+ as well as using other social media platforms.
Social Media And Sharing
Whilst this was touched upon in the previous tier, there are some particular things that you need to think about when it comes to promoting your content on social media.
This shouldn’t take as much effort as the other tiers, but it is still important to ensure organic traffic and high rankings.
Once you have published your content on your website, you should think about where else to share it.
For example, an industry specific blog or website or sharing platform.
This will direct people to your content who will find it useful and relevant, which will increase the chances of them sharing your content on their own social media sites.
If you have a press release, then you should also share it on a news site or platform.
There are also the usual social media sites that you should use to gain maximum exposure- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.
If you have a list of subscribers or people who have signed up for email marketing then make sure you utilize these avenues as well.
Reflection
The final step of the tear is to measure your success and reflect on how to improve.
This will help you to stay ahead of the curve and to ensure that your site and your progress does not become stagnant.
Summary
Using the hierarchy of web presence optimization can help you to improve the quality and quantity of traffic going to your site, and allows you to use the Google SEO algorithm in your favor.
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
