How To Automate Your SEO Strategy

SEO Automation

To run a business successfully in the 21st century, you must develop a sound online marketing campaign. Search engine optimization should be at the center of it.

SEO is the practice of using algorithms to drive people to your website. It involves a complex array of virtual systems and structures that have a single aim: clicks on websites owned by your company.

It would be costly and inefficient for members of your workforce or even an independent firm to monitor and manage your SEO operations. You should instead automate as many SEO tasks as you can.

If applied effectively, SEO automation software can significantly improve the efficiency of your SEO process.

What You Can Automate in SEO

You cannot automate everything. But you don’t need to. You just need to automate the most tedious and time-consuming tasks and process. Here are some of the parts you should focus on:

1. Site monitoring

After you launch your new SEO campaign, you will need to monitor it to keep track of how it performs. You will need to figure out ways to improve the site and carry out any maintenance required. It is essential to assess page load time, broken links, site downtime, and other basic housekeeping issues.

This kind of monitoring can be automated. There is software that allows you to set up alerts if something goes wrong with your site. Automation will also help you collect data on your site quickly so that you can put it into action straightaway.

2. Rank tracking

The main reason for developing and implementing SEO algorithms is for your website to rank high when key words and phrases are used in search engines. You will need a way to track this ranking process. But when you have a multitude of sites and hundreds of pages with keywords in them, it is difficult to track each page’s ranking manually. The better option is to automate. Automation software will make it easy for you to see how your pages are doing is search engine rankings. It will also show how your rankings change and improve over time.

3. Backlink analysis

Backlinks are fundamental to your SEO campaign. Backlinks demonstrate the soundness of the content you have published on your sites. They enhance the authority of your brand and boost confidence and trust in your company over time, which leads to an increase in rankings.

You will want the best backlinks for your page. However, you will need to monitor them to ensure their quality. SEO automation simplifies this process. The software you use will make it easier for you to see who is linking to your websites.

4. Competitor monitoring

You are in the most intense competition with other businesses for search engine rankings. The more information you have on your rivals the easier it will be to create SEO algorithms and strategies to outdo them—that is, outrank them.

You may have more competitors than you think. The web is a kind of equalizer when it comes to business. You can be sure that your rivals for search engine rankings go beyond those you are already familiar with. There are probably hundreds of companies that you must contend with. Automating the competitor monitoring process allows you to see the biggest threats to your ranking and develop strategies to keep your business at the top.

5. Site audit

There may be a number of technical issues that prevent your sites from ranking as high as they should. While it is possible to identify such issues through a crawl, this takes a great deal of time. You should instead automate the process. You can set up a crawl program that will do most of the work for you and present the problems that may be holding you back. You can then focus on fixing the issues rather than uncovering them.

6. Reports

Creating and presenting reports is part of managing your business. Financial stakeholders, employees, clients, and prospective clients will all want to know how your business is doing. They will want to know the areas in which your company is strong and those places that need improvement.

Generating reports helps you get the financing and investment you need to operate and expand. It also helps you develop a strategy that will help you meet your business goals. If your company is based entirely online or is heavily dependent on the virtual sphere, your reports will focus mostly on SEO operations. The trouble is that creating these reports is time-consuming. Your executive team cannot spare the time to carry out this task.

Fortunately, report generation is a SEO task that can be automated. You can create a range of different reports, including those covering monthly SEO status, organic search positions, site audits, backlinks, and competitor analysis.

7. Log file analyzer

One of the best ways to assess how search engines interact with your sites is to analyze the log files of your sites. This is a little-known method of figuring out which of your pages are being crawled and which of your pages is the most crawled. It will also help you determine whether your crawl budget is being well-spent.

Use SEO Automation Plugin

When choosing an SEO automation plugin, choose a company that has a strong track record of delivering proven results. The SEO plugin you choose is a crucial decision because it will help streamline SEO tasks. The one we use is called “SEO Press” and is among the top names in the industry.

With SEO Press, you get all the SEO and optimization bells and whistles you need in one plugin. Special features include the ability to manage your titles and to create meta descriptions and meta robots for every post and page.

SEO Press can also improve your search engine crawling by providing XML sitemaps of your posts, pages, and custom post types. And it offers software such as Open Graph tags, Twitter Card, and Google Knowledge Graph to enhance social network sharing.

SEO automation can help you be a better manager, organizer, and entrepreneur—whether you run a growing independent company or you are part of a large and well-established firm.

I hope this post was helpful to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts about your favorite SEO automation tools and which ones you’ve had the most success with? Drop a comment in the box below and let me know!

THE ART OF SEO ARTICLE WRITING – 8 Things You Must Know

THE ART OF SEO ARTICLE WRITING – 8 Things You Must Know

The other day I was counting the number of articles in the past 10 years I have published on the web for my clients, and my own web sites. I was amazed (and a little scared at how the years continue to sail away on me) in discovering that the number is approaching over 10,000 pages.  Needless to say, I have picked up a few gems of publishing wisdom along the way. Below are some quick concepts that will help you write your content in a way that will get you results on Google.  Enjoy.

1. Why do SEO articles have to be written around keywords? Search engine optimized articles are considered to be “strategic content” for your web site.   Strategic content is essentially a block of informational text that contains the keywords that are important to your business.  Google loves web sites that have loads of helpful, keyword rich pages.   The type of writing we provide is meant to make the search engines and directories happy, in turn providing you with well ranked content.

2. Could we loosen up the SEO power and make it sound more Ernest Hemingway style? Of course. But the question is will this effort produce results and meet your traffic building goals. The job of the SEO Article is to drive people to your web site from the search engines. In most cases readers will spend a minute glossing the article, and then click to the homepage (internet surfers are usually in a hurry). SEO Articles are generally 500 word blocks of factual, helpful ‘informational’ text (writer is confined to a set of keywords). SEO Articles are written specifically for the search engines – to help the search engines find your product or service. SEO is educational marketing!

3. Why do companies write SEO articles? Part of the success of your business today depends on your ability to generate a top ranks on Google. The reason companies write SEO articles today is primarily because the phone calls and new leads they bring in. SEO articles generates awareness of your product or service online and help your customers to easily find your offering. New visitors at your web site results in more sales and more success. Google loves to rank web sites highly that have helpful directories of how-to articles. There is no trickery or games here. Google describes in their guidelines how to write articles and place keywords in a way that will help them to find and consider showing your content on their search engine. We are simply following the guidelines and helping you to save time so you can focus on your core business. Our writing staff is trained on the art of web marketing content and SEO content. We write articles in a non-self promotional style so that they will be accepted into the major article marketing directories. This kind of foresight will help you to avoid having to rewrite your entire article when the time comes to do article marketing. We also utilize proper keyword density and do not engage in keyword stuffing techniques. The bottom line, your customer base is searching for you every day. Give your customers what they want, write SEO articles around the exact keywords they are searching for. You’ll be glad you did, and happy with the results.

4.  What’s the difference between a magazine article, and an SEO Article? This is often times a point of confusion for business owners, especially poets, journalists. :).  SEO Articles tend to be short blocks of factual text, with embedded keywords that customers use when searching for your product or service. In contrast, with magazine articles, the writer has full freedom of expression, and generally has a goal of getting the reader excited. The type of writing that you see in magazines is more motivational and compelling. With most SEO articles, this will not be the case and shouldn’t be the case.  SEO Articles aim to be short, factual, helpful and keyword rich. A greater degree of flexibility is typically afforded for the literary aspects of SEO Articles for this reason. SEO Articles are not written for a magazine or for your homepage. They are written primarily for the search engines and to build in-roads to your web site (links), and ultimately to generate more traffic for your web site.  That said, they are still helpful and informative for the reader.

5. Can an article be both motivational, compelling and SEO’d?  Yes, but the price tag rises substantially for articles taking more than 4-5 hours of time. Ask us about our 2500 word “Power Content” article ($400 per article.) We always do our best to provide the kind of content you are looking for. We’ve been told the article quality we deliver in our standard packages is the highest on the net by several firms. If you are not happy, you don’t pay for the article – bottom line. However, we encourage you to gain a clear understanding about the objective of the SEO article, which is to help you accomplish your SEO goals of traffic building. As with any business relationship there is a give and take among time and resources dedicated to the project. We are always listening and focused on your feedback. Our goal is to deliver a quality product for you. Please be aware that mixing strategies can get expensive. Writers are very expensive, and while you can pay for additional motivational and personal content to be integrated into your articles, you should expect our writers to spend on average 4-5 hours of time researching blocks of factual, objective content for you, and embedding the important high search keywords.  By itself, it is a labor intensive process. The result of having ten 500 word keyword rich articles at your web site is an increased volume of traffic and more business for you. Many of our clients hire us to write standard content and very happy with our price points. Others with stringent writing guidelines polish according to their needs and save large amounts of time by using our service. While still others opt to inquire about our 2500 word “Power Content” article ($400 per article.) We encourage you to take our lead as we are professionals in this area. Business owners that choose to rewrite the articles in their own way, often times will defeat the purpose of the SEO Article as proper keyword density is carefully crafted into each article. This is an important point to understand. Stay focused on the project goal which is short, factual, helpful ( and low cost) 500 word blocks of keyword rich content.  Magazine style content should be focused entirely on with a traditional copywriter that ignores the search engine aspects of your article. This kind of content is not really needed to accomplish your traffic building goals.   Our goal is to help you build a bustling article directory at your site consisting of 100+ helpful articles and at the same time, create a large return on investment for you. It is always our goal to find a win-win happy medium with our clients content generation needs. Lastly, as mentioned above, if you require special writing needs, help is available for an hourly fee of $75/hour, or ask us about our 2500 word “Power Content” article ($400 per article.) For the most part, we will try and be flexible for you.

6.  Why do you talk about the competitors? Sometimes we will talk objectively about competitors or solutions but we try to write in a direction that will help your cause. Objective content is what people want.  Keep in mind, if the content is objective and factual (non self promotional) it is more likely to be accepted in your article marketing campaigns.  Moreover customers trust levels increase with you when you write in this style.

7.  Can we pay more for higher quality writing? Yes. Ask us about our 2500 word “Power Content” article ($400 per article.)  For the most part our articles are very high quality.  However, should you require us to meet with you and gain a clear understanding of your material or web site and offering – help is available. Search Engine Pros are pioneering the lowest cost article writing service on the net, while maintaining a high degree of quality in each article. Should you decide that you would like an article to be rewritten, we will do 1 re-write of your article at no cost. If our 2nd pass fails, we will discuss your quality goals and the higher price points with you. Each of our SEO articles is written by educated and creative writers, and proofread for factual accuracy and spelling/grammar.  If you are a company that needs a different style of writing or more custom writing to your business, help is available!  To succeed with SEO, you need to have hundreds of keyword rich pages at your web site, please keep this in mind as you focus on your goal of building a helpful keyword rich article directory at your site.

8.  Article Marketing: After you write an article, the next step is to promote your article by way of Article Marketing. The important thing to note here is that most article directories require you to follow special writing guidelines, i.e. non self promotional content, certain numbers of links in the resource box, etc, generally they are seeking objective and factual content. Such writing guidelines are labor intensive to follow.  Hence it makes sense to take our lead on the SEO article writing format. If you choose to have us help with your article marketing, we will be uploading the article to your site, optimizing the article, and submitting to the article directories, such as www.ezinearticles.com The result is more traffic at your web site. Questions?  Call us at 800.605.4988 and we will help you every step of the way.

To Your Search Engine Success!

Taylor Reaume

Search Engine Pros

2010 01 05 GVC WebMarketing