ENSURE YOUR SEO SUCCESS IS HERE TO STAY

IF there’s one thing you have to beware of in today’s fast-moving business world it is previous SEO success!
Countless companies have achieved a few years of strong search results and then relied on their brand to keep up the good work. That’s when yesterday’s SEO success can so easily lead to failure tomorrow.
Yes, it is true that brands remain a very strong signal when it comes to that all-important ranking, but they are not the sole criteria in the search for SEO success. Recent advancements such as ‘authorship rank’ and SearchPlus Your World have seen to that.
SEO is a market place where there are no divine rights and too often presumption on the part of companies is leading to money-costing complacency. Indeed standing still is not an option when it comes to SEO success – you either move forward or you lose ground.
The challenge is therefore on for your SEO strategist to challenge the corporate ego and red tape and identify what, if anything, are your barriers to SEO success. The first sign that something is going wrong is simple enough to spot – a rival company is suddenly doing it better and faster than you are. You can guarantee that nothing will get your boss’ attention quicker than evidence you are being outranked with your own ideas or content and are fast slipping down the league table of SEO success.
This can easily be put right; perhaps the problem is a missed title tag on your part. Or it could be a symptom of larger problems with your content creation process. Whatever the problem, the trail will lead back to editorial. The role of a content producer is always busy as they are the mouthpiece of the company and guardians of your brand’s editorial integrity. But if they think responsibility for SEO success lies elsewhere then your thinking is well out of date.
SEO content teams must appreciate their audience – who they are, what they need and are daily looking for. Cultivating that following isn’t an option, it is a requirement for SEO success. This includes doing regular keyword research around their topics to discover both search and seasonal trends. They should also be effectively monitoring news and what their users are doing to then adapt their own workflow and processes.
Training is vital to ongoing SEO success. Hold training sessions every month at least – along with informal SEO meetings – to ensure information is being shared. These meetings provide chances for staff to talk about changing trends within their own industry and discuss how they are going to respond to ensure SEO success.
Your in-house SEO expert should be constantly refreshing his or her colleagues on why search is so important for SEO success. Monthly search ranking reports, plus daily and weekly emails illustrating real examples of successes and failures are just some of the ways to continually refresh those who will be held responsible for continuing SEO success.
There are some occasions when SEO success can come second in a company’s never ending list of priorities. A designer may choose Flash over HTML for the new photo gallery while the tech team has its own ideas. Also an editor may want to use an eye-catching and clever headline for visitors to the home page but without certain targeted keyword phrases. These are all fine as long as everyone is aware that these decisions are being made at the expense of a search opportunity and SEO success.