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Wow! I just got back from a great couple of days at IMPACT Live 2019. IMPACT Live is a 2-day conference full of expert speakers on all things marketing. It was a great experience and I can’t wait to put all the things I learned into action! 

There is a misperception out there that building a new website will automatically draw in more leads. The first step, before you get more leads, is getting your website to appear at the top of the organic search results. Although the term is "organic results," it's not as simple as planting a seeding and walking away. Just like a plant, you have to do things to your website make sure it grows and stays strong. 

That means that the websites you see at the top of the  search engine results page (SERP) didn't show up by accident. They most likely spent time and energy figuring out what they can do to be the most relevant search result for their potential visitors. So what do you need to do to get up there at the top of the SERP?

Before we dive headlong into the differences between paid and organic search, it's critical that you understand a bigger picture first. Paid and organic search are both parts of a much larger umbrella in the world of sales and client acquisition – they're both forms of inbound marketing. And if you're trying to use your website to drive more visitors who could potentially become your customer/client/patient, then inbound marketing is something you need to know about.

Every organization, regardless of industry, should optimize the digital content that they release. If you fail to optimize the content you put out, you're losing valuable members of your audience before they've even had a chance to find you. It's essential that you make your content accessible to as many people as possible; and that's only achievable through content optimization. 

But what is content optimization? The short answer to this question is that it's a process designed to ensure that content is written in a certain way. This "certain way" essentially boils down to content being valuable and readable – it should be written in a way that allows it to reach the largest possible target audience.

Pillar pages are not a particularly new idea, but they've recently gotten more attention. Do you understand why pillar pages are a big deal today and how to use them to improve your organic ranking in Google results? 

It's probably nothing new when you hear that you need to blog. "What's it gonna do for me," you ask? Well... it can mean all the difference in the number of good leads that you bring in through your website. And that should help you increase sales.

We often hear, "Blogging takes time and it uses my resources." This is true. And there's no point in doing something just to do it. It has to produce results, aka: more leads who better match your target audience(s). So, how do you blog to increase leads? 

Pop-ups can, and do, work when done right. But what is that happy medium? Do they hurt your SEO? How can you get positive results versus simply annoying the visitor?  

Remember back in the earlier days of SEO when the main goal was to fill a webpage with a keyword or two that you wanted to rank for in search results? Sometimes it would even seemed a little ridiculous when you were reading "SEO'd" content because you'd read the same key phrase over and over in a few paragraphs just stuck in the content where it didn't really belong. Many marketers know this practice as "keyword stuffing."

Spoiler Alert: There’s No SEO Magic Bullet!

Have a website? Building a website? Already built a website? Thinking about a starting a website?

If you can answer "yes" to any form of the above listed questions, and you're worried about your website's SEO ranking, then you're in the right place! 

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the focus of optimizing a website in order to rank higher in the search engine results, and it addresses the most obvious goal for any website - which is to make sure that people can easily find you. Your website needs to rank high on the list of search results in Google, Bing, or any other search engine that one of your potential leads may be using. Improving your website's SEO ranking takes some careful planning, but it's worth it, so your website can be found at the top of the page in search results.

Most everyone knows that carefully created content is one of the keys to an effective SEO strategy. But there are some technical details that can also affect your rankings.  You could be doing (or not doing) things that are keeping your website from rising in organic results.  Some of SEO activities may require your web developer to make them happen.  

Check out these five items to be sure you have the technical bases covered for an improved SEO position.