SEO isn’t rocket science; best practices are easy to learn and implement with a little practice. However, SEO goes way beyond simple best practices to include strategies and techniques only realized and utilized through experience. Furthermore, advanced SEO (in my opinion) is the practice of successful and proven techniques coupled with methodologies that support larger business objectives.
These are in sense, less of specific tactics as they are an approach for providing advanced SEO services.
1) Integrate Analytics
Data-driven decisions is our mantra. Whether it’s Google Analytics, Omniture or WebTrends, it doesn’t matter. Just as long as it’s configured or has the appropriate features/applications/components to provide SEO intelligence. Analytics should be used identify opportunities and weaknesses of a site.
Site search, apart from functionality is a feedback tool, providing insight into what user’s are searching for on a site. Analytics is the key to mining this data from your site’s users and incorporating it into an SEO keyword plan.
Additionally, sections of a site should be analyzed independently to determine their overall impact in terms of driving organic traffic; including a blog, categories and any deeper content. Understanding of historic data gives insight into where the site has been and where it’s capable of going.
2) Monitoring & Measurement
Most SEO specialists have some sort of measurement system in place for measuring impact; from ranking positions to organic traffic. However, monitoring and measurement should go beyond a simple aggregate of monthly organic traffic to measure campaigns from every angle; including segmentation of organic traffic and long tail impact.
All online marketers, especially SEO specialists should be well versed in the theory of the long-tail; whereas most traffic consists of infrequent and rather unique search queries. The majority of keyword traffic lies in the long tail, thus every SEO strategy should focus on tapping into long tail traffic. As such, that strategy also needs to be monitored and quantified.
Organic traffic should be segmented in the following buckets: branded, head keywords and long tail keywords. Additionally, a few filters, customer reports, and some reg ex can easily configure Google Analytics to track SEO efforts as this level; providing insight into the true impact of SEO.
3) SEO to Compliment Design
SEO often and regularly conflicts with design. This is most often the case with bigger brands where branding and style guidelines are integral and more often than not, required. Advanced SEO techniques offer alternatives to such heavy design (images & rich media) rather than the normal contradictory approach.
Simply suggesting removing Flash for instance, is no recommendation. Flash has it’s place even as SEO unfriendly as it may be. There is a balance between user experience/branding and SEO; advanced SEOers know when to offer the middle ground.
4) Business Analysis
Ok, this isn’t necessarily “seo”, but it is important that SEO specialists integrate a deep level of business understanding into their approach. Where does SEO fit into the overall marketing mix? What are the KPIs beyond just organic traffic? How does your sales cycle map to your SEO strategy?
It’s important to understand more than simply just rankings; you need to know if SEO is helping your business succeed. An advanced SEO approach will need to make recommendations regarding budgets and resources; prioritizing SEO against other mediums and needs.
5) On-site & Off-site Plan
This “catch all” method really just includes the other major components of advanced seo – content development, landing page optimization and link baiting. SEO is nothing without the off-site factors (external backlinks) and vice a versa with the on-site factors.
A thorough SEO strategy includes both an on-site and off-site strategy and most importantly how the two strategies overlap.
Of course, our jobs don’t stop once a user hits the site; it actually just begins. SEO and online marketing aren’t just about specific variables and tactics but rather a bigger picture of how resources, techniques and technology align with overarching business objectives.
Tags: advanced seo
