What Is Dark Traffic in Google Analytics?

What Is Dark Traffic in Google Analytics?

Whether you are a blogger, a digital marketing expert or a business owner, you rely on website metrics to determine visitor engagement, which campaigns are successful, and the source of website traffic. One of the tools you utilize for this purpose would be Google Analytics that provides you with web statistics and data. You can use this information for devising future strategies, tactics to drive business growth.

However, are you sure that you’re not missing out on anything? Hidden underneath the layers of analytics data, an issue known as Dark traffic is the black hole of SEO that you may not be aware of as it is mis-categorized as direct traffic on the Google Analytics Dashboard. This could potentially skew the impact of your marketing efforts as the data is not entirely accurate.

Ever since 2012, Google has not allowed Analytics users to see the keywords that users typed-in to search engines and is instead listed as “not provided”. This move was made considering the privacy of signed- in users but it ended up being a loss of valuable information to business owners and Google Analytics users. Another change that affected dark traffic is when Google restricted access to Keyword Planning Tool to those with at least one active AdWords campaign.

So when a large portion of users are misdirected, it may even significantly affect the quality of your success. Partnering with SEO consulting services can help you reduce the effect of dark traffic and maximize the revenue of your business.

What Is Dark Traffic?

To comprehend dark traffic accurately, you need to know what constitutes direct traffic. The total site traffic is divided into direct, search and paid visitors, based on the source of their origin. Direct traffic is essentially the number of visitors who arrived at your website by typing the URL directly into the search bar or using bookmarks. The ideal range of direct referral should be from 10% to 20% of the whole traffic and if it’s less than that, the website’s reach is considered too poor and if the incoming traffic is higher, then the website is said to have a lot of dark traffic.

The data in direct traffic doesn’t always consist of users who directly came to the website by manually typing the address or through bookmarking. The root of the issue comes down to when attribution or referral information of the visitor’s origin cannot be tracked; Google sorts it into direct traffic instead. In fact, whenever Google can’t identify how a user reached the website, it automatically assumes it as direct traffic.

When a user who is logged into Google types queries onto the search engine, the keywords he/she uses are what determines the web pages they land on. These keywords, however are hidden from Google Analytics users as they are grouped under “not provided,’ so the keywords of a search are not available anymore. This is specifically known as “dark search” and it’s a problem for SEO specialists and marketers since it makes keyword research and measuring the ROI of specific keywords much more challenging.

The trouble with dark traffic is that it can cause setbacks for a company since it is vital to understand the referral journeys of the visitors, in order to analyze and discover their most valuable customers. This issue is also amplified on mobile because of its socially-driven nature in which link-clicking from apps installed is the norm to arrive at a website.

Origin of Dark Traffic

Where Does Dark Traffic Come from?

Dark traffic may arise from various sources, such as the following:

  • When a visitor clicks a link from a secure HTTPS connection to land on an insecure HTTPS website, referral information is lost and therefore it is categorized as dark traffic
  • Links shared and clicked over social media apps especially when they offer end-to-end encryption and does not pass referral information
  • Links send out through emails or text messages for purposes of digital marketing that don’t have source data
  • Any link that originates from non-web based files such as PDF or WORD document.

The Impact of Dark Traffic

The concerns with dark traffic lie on the shoulders of digital marketers mainly because it obstructs the traffic credit given to the right channels as they are misdirected, leaving you in the dark about the performance of the digital campaigns. You require accurate information about website analytics to understand and evaluate the results of your marketing efforts and for devising further strategies, so the presence of dark traffic could potentially misguide the time and resources you spend on marketing campaigns.

Let’s say you come up with and design an innovative email marketing strategy, work tirelessly to execute it and when the results arrive, you saw the sales increase but no data about the outcome of your email marketing. You may feel discouraged and abandon email marketing for the next project thinking of it as a failed strategy, though it might have been the reason you saw increase in sales.

So, if you are inadvertently led to bad strategic decisions formed from dark traffic, you might miss out on valuable data that drive substantial amount of traffic and thereby will be left with a missed opportunity for revenue growth. On a brighter note, dark traffic is identifiable and controllable to an extent so you don’t have to deal with the misfortune of uncertainty when it comes to your direct traffic.

How to Resolve Dark Traffic?

While it might be impossible to completely get rid of dark traffic, there are still ways to come around it so you can prevent it from occurring as much as possible going forward by:

  1. UTM parameters

The tried and tested method to gain control of dark traffic is by implementing UTM parameters. Google UTM parameters are tags appended manually at the end of each URL in hyperlinks to track relevant information about the link. The types of UTM parameters you can employ are:

  • Campaign source (utm_source) – This tag identifies and shows you the source of the visit, for example – utm_source=Google means source of traffic is Google Search.
  • Campaign medium (utm_medium) – This code is used to identify the specific medium or channel your visitor found the URL in. Examples are social media, emails and CPC ads. The tag is utm_medium=social.
  • Campaign name (utm_campaign) – The name given to the URL for indicating which campaign the promotion is associated with.
  • Campaign term (utm_term) – The parameter to identify the paid keywords driving the campaign.
    Campaign content (utm_content) – This tag is used to identify the exact item on your page that was clicked. For example, if you have two CTAs, it helps to distinguish between the two.

You can use a UTM link builder for this purpose by filling out a form and letting the software build a link for you.

  1. Use Google Analytics

Another way to identify dark traffic is by implementing a new segment in Google Analytics to locate only direct traffic. Apply the segment and identify the potential pages on your website that is likely to gain a lot of direct traffic such as the home page of your site. The goal is to filter out pages that are easy and popular to find so that only pages with longer, complex URLs remain which are least likely to gain direct traffic. Your website is most likely to have a mix of direct and dark traffic, but if a page is getting a massive amount of direct traffic, chances are the majority of it is dark traffic.

Other ways to find dark traffic include incorporating surveys or forms to directly inquire about the source of visit from users, easy sharing options for applications such as Messenger or Whatsapp, and excluding return visitors from your website. You can use pre-built methods that are available to add and customize new segment to your liking.

  1. Filter out to reclassify traffic

While your team is working on your website, they might visit it on a regular basis so make sure to exclude them from your traffic. You can do that by finding and adding the I.P address of office location and block Google Analytics from tracking this I.P. Google Analytics has a data called channels in the report workspace that you can utilize to understand the source traffic. The channel has default groupings such as direct, email, referral and display and the option to create customized channel to categorize traffic to your website.

You may also reclassify traffic into channels such as social media traffic, so if the user found the link from Facebook, it will be classified under social media channel. Filtering out this way helps you to sort data and gain a broad overview of the source of traffic to your website.

The complexity of the internet ecosystem makes it impossible to entirely remove dark traffic but you can mitigate its effect to some extent by improving data tracking and collection accuracy. This ensures that you make smart marketing strategies and understand any potential user-behavior changes that may affect the revenue of your business. Creating and navigating intricate customized reports on Google Analytics can be tricky, so hiring a search engine optimization company will take this responsibility off your hands. Search engine experts can plan and implement the best digital marketing strategies to help your business grow.

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How to Get Valuable Referring Domains

How to Get Valuable Referring Domains

Getting as many referring domains (linking domains) to your website could considerably boost ranking. Linking domains and backlinks, though different are interconnected. You need to please the top-notch domains to drive quality traffic to your website. A “no-compromise” approach on quality requires extreme precision in each step. This is where professional SEO services come into play, helping you gather links from referring domains, ultimately gaining more viewers.

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Get Referring Domains – 17 Tips to Follow

 

  1. Consider your target audience

Look into the interests of your target audience. Tools like market research and audience analysis help in determining their interests, demographic details etc. This strategy is a goal-oriented approach helping to filter the domains good for your goal.

  1. Identifying your top performing pages

The top performing pages of your website are those that have received the most number of backlinks. By optimizing the content of these pages, you can strengthen solidity and secure more referring domains. Content gap analysis is one way to look out for any possible changes in the SEO strategy that could drive more traffic, and viewers.

  1. Worthy content

Content must be worthy enough that the audience and website owners see it as trustworthy. Insightful content with meaningful data must be the sole motto. Use of case studies, public expert roundup posts etc. can help build this confidence. Additionally, focus on the inclusion of skyscraper, actionable and trending content. The content you create must also be relevant to the brand’s theme.

  1. An eye on the competitors

Your competitor websites contain the most amount of tips and tactics relevant to yours. Conduct a thorough research on their link profiles and referring domains to relatively improve yours. This helps in gaining new sources by the establishment of new connections and collaborations.

  1. Optimize your link building strategy

Follow a data-driven, up-to-date strategy for making the best quality backlinks and thereby attracting high-quality linking domains. Stick to the SEO guidelines and practices for effective results. Always remember that it’s the diversity of domains that matters. Acquiring additional backlinks from the same domain in fact deteriorates the quality and ranking.

  1. Choose the right tools

If you succeed in choosing the right tools, half of the work is done and secured. Using prospecting and outreach tools can organically find domains where you can pitch your content.

  1. Finding the most reputable referring domains

List down the most reputable and popular linking domains of your niche and categorize them based on your subject matter. It is advisable to build backlinks with them rather than spend hours on low-quality unpopular domains. The result of the former is increased web traffic.

  1. Analyzing your referring domains report

Pitch out a referring domains report and conduct a thorough analysis. Identify those contributing to the strongest backlink profile and high domain authority scores. Such domains must be preferred to put in more efforts for finer outcomes. Use this report to identify those making no major contributions and optimize strategies accordingly.

  1. Contribute to other websites

Guest posting in authority blog websites increases the number of linking domains. When you give contributions for building content for a blog website, you are traded back with backlinks. Sharing your ideas and knowledge is a proven way to gain more traffic and backlinks.

  1. Try image link building

Create pleasing visuals on popular topics of your niche and see other websites use them countlessly. Good images distributed far and wide tend to be reused by similar websites and those of higher authority. Obtain the image courtesy in the form of links and the ‘user’ becomes your referring domain.

Get Referring Domains

  1. Get more ‘expert’ contributions

Subject matter experts provide insightful inputs for viewers. Incorporating their contributions into your content helps earn brand value. Expert certification can earn the trust of viewers and other websites, leading to the flow of backlinks.

  1. Reach out to industry leaders

Creating a network with industry leaders will help establish connections and thereby secure valuable referring domains. This helps in getting noticed by the mainstream owners and the rest is accelerated with content quality and other factors.

  1. Links from outdated resources

Outdated resources aren’t helpful to your website or the general audience if they remain so. However, recreating updated versions is a good strategy. Reach out to the owners, provide them recreated content in exchange for backlinks. The beneficiaries are not just both the websites, but also the viewers who get an upgraded version of reliable data.

  1. Influencer collaboration

Co-marketing with influencers could bring more attention towards your website. Common subject matters could be made a topic of discussion, driving more traffic from the influencer’s audience. This could in turn earn the confidence of popular linking domains as the collaboration is often mutual.

  1. Link the unlinked brand mentions

What if your brand is mentioned in a website, blog or social media but not linked? The solution is to reach out to the owners and secure a link. This is a straight-forward method with a fair possibility to earn more referring domains.

  1. Linkable assets are an advantage

Pictures, infographics, website templates, WordPress themes, printables, audio files etc. are high-quality assets that could be offered for free. Websites using these free resources automatically helps generate more links from different domains.

  1. Conduct affiliate programs

Affiliate programs that are appealing enough encourages contemporary websites to collaborate and create links. This enlarges the network of referring domains which could also be of great aid in the future.

In order to stand out among the opponents ‘a component of trust’ or in other words backlinks from high profile linking domains are crucial. A digital marketing service company has excellent expertise in building valuable backlinks and thereby obtaining relevant referring domains.

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What Is the Difference between Earned Media and Paid Media?

What Is the Difference between Earned Media and Paid Media?

If you’ve ever purchased any products online, let’s say a dress, you must have made that decision after going through several options and research. Either you saw a compelling ad that intrigued you or you checked reviews on social media that convinced you to buy the product or maybe it’s a bit of both, as in most cases. In both scenarios, it’s the influence and power of media on the sales of a product that is highlighted here.

The key strategy in media communication of today’s marketing world involves leveraging various types of media, which can be broadly classified into the three main categories – paid, earned and owned media. Each media channel plays a critical role and work together in ideal balance to reach your target audience, and help achieve your marketing revenue goals. Each type gives you distinct advantages and challenges, so take your time to understand what can be achieved with each one, how it affects your digital marketing strategy and increase sales for your business.

According to a report by Demand Gen, B2B marketers allocate approximately 32% digital marketing budget for owned media, followed by paid media at 25% and earned media at 24%. If you want to engage your organization to improve and retain customers, increase sales, build a strong reputation and take your business to new heights, partner with an affordable digital marketing services company to create an effective marketing strategy.

Earned Media Vs Paid Media

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What Is Earned Media?

Earned media is the publicity that you receive through various forms such as word of mouth, online reviews, social media advocacy and feedback from customers. This is a unique type of media which originates organically outside your company’s marketing efforts so you gain expansive audience reach and increase the credibility of your brand. It is often unpaid so you can call it as a form of free advertising – however, it comes with a disadvantage of being uncontrollable, so there’s always a chance at negative media.

Earned media has exploded in recent times with the rise in social media and technology, making it one of the most powerful marketing tools. Digital technology gives consumers the freedom to actively engage with sharing reviews and ratings for any company’s products and its service, so it is in a way opposite of paid media. Earned media, however, if utilized effectively, is an investment that has the potential to be most impactful and instill trust in the audience because consumers often prefer personal recommendations to advertisement.

Earned media can amplify your business’s reputation and credibility at no cost and that’s why you need to evaluate the value of earned media in your digital marketing strategy. You can measure earned media through various means such as social media engagement, online ratings, and influencer mentions. Hiring an organic SEO company to evaluate the current standing and finding the drawbacks in your website is crucial for implementing new strategies to improve your company website’s organic ranking. Let’s go over some other benefits of earned media as well:

  • Build brand authority and trust: When you organically build your brand’s reputation and authoritativeness, you naturally gain the trust of the consumers.
  • Reach a wider audience: As you cannot target a specific audience with this strategy, you benefit from reaching a far wider audience beyond predetermined numbers.
  • Cost-effective: Unlike other Medias, here you are not required to plan any strategies such as advertising or email marketing, so it costs comparatively lesser. Instead, invest in PR to strategize effective communication with the audience and pitch to publications by building relationships with journalists.
  • Receive authentic feedback: You may receive constructive feedback from your audience in the form of online reviews, testimonials etc. which helps in the growth of your brand. It also builds authenticity since the public knows that you didn’t pay for it.

What Is Paid Media?

Paid media, as the name suggests, is simply the media marketing which you pay for that shows up in front of the audience. It incorporates any marketing effort such as – print, radio and digital ads, TV advertising, social media ads, and promotional display content in websites that can’t be executed for free. Paid media can be divided into two categories: display ads and paid search. Display ads are executed to the public whereas paid search appears only if customers actively search for it.

Although paid media can involve an initial hefty fee, it is a great way to get an immediate return on investment. Using the above approaches, you can collaborate with digital marketing services to garner wider and targeted audience impression, improve conversion rates and boost profits. It’s relatively easy for marketing experts to track the performance using analytics for readjusting strategies to generate better leads, promote content to generate earned media and direct your audience to owned media properties – ultimately make sales. Here are a few major benefits of paid media:

  • Target the desired audience: Paid media allows you to tailor ads to the ideal audience based on your preference such as age, income, location, gender, or interests.
  • Gain fast results: Paid ads are the most trackable form of media that allows you to determine which approach gave you the best results quickly. Several tracking tools like Google Analytics, Keyhole, Hootsuite etc. monitor audience demographics and measure the results of your efforts.
  • Increase brand visibility: To get recognition, your brand must first gain visibility among the audience. Paid media can generate curiosity in people and drive traffic to your website, increasing your brand awareness.
  • Retain customers: Your paid media aims to constantly remind and refresh the audience’s mind of your service so your customers remain loyal while you gain new audience.

How to Differentiate between Earned Media and Paid Media?

With numerous media channels available for digital marketing at your disposal, it might be confusing to choose one that fits your brand. The right way to utilize them is to prioritize in a way that makes sense for your goals and integrate strategies from both media types that fulfill different needs and requirements of your company. It’s vital to know the main characteristics of each media type and how to differentiate between them to help you make the right decisions for your business.

Control

The key differentiator between earned and paid media is the level of control you can exercise on them. Paid media offers a high level of control over the way your brand is perceived by the public since it allows you to establish the unique identity, quality, values, tone, and look of your business. It also reaches people a lot faster than other types, and you can define the demographic of the audience you want to target. When it comes to earned media however, you have basically no control over the way your brand might be received in the eyes of audience. So, that’s why it is important to run your business sincerely and truthfully, as it affects your earned media either positively or negatively, depending upon how well your customers are satisfied. People tend to trust reviews, testimonials etc. over paid ads because it comes from an unbiased point of view, giving it more reliability and credibility.

Budget

The budget you can allocate is crucial when it comes to navigating media types. All three media types come at a cost, but paid media is the priciest of them. Although costly, paid media also offers the best return on investment since it’s more effective in reaching a massive audience and your marketing strategies are easily measurable. You don’t get this in earned media, but it comes with other benefits like building trust and reputation for your brand in the audience. For example, if you want to sell a product within a short period of time, paid media does the job but if your goal is to build an overall image, identity and reputation for your brand in the long run, then earned media is the way to go. So choose to invest your budget according to the business’s goals to reap the rewards.

Impact

All media channels have impact; however it varies with content, target and strategies to be implemented for your business. Firstly, it’s important to define your goals to discern the level of impact you prefer to create with your marketing tactics. If your goal is to generate interest and awareness about your service among the public, then paid media makes the biggest impact that allows you to target a wider amount of people within a short time. When you want to set up a successful business that survives in the long run, it’s tough to achieve it without earned media. So selecting the right media channels is imperative for establishing the level of impact you want to attain for your company.

How to Choose the Right Media for Your Business?

The best strategy of digital marketing is combining all the elements of paid, earned and owned media channels for your business. Several factors such as budget constraints, target audience, impact level, and revenue goals influence the marketing strategy you execute. Each media type plays a role in creating a synergy among the multichannel media for the integration of campaigns, infrastructure and resources throughout the digital marketing strategies. So choose a digital marketing services company that streamlines the marketing process to avail all the benefits of paid and earned media for your company and increase ROI.

How to Build an SEO Roadmap

How to Build an SEO Roadmap

What’s an SEO Roadmap?

An SEO roadmap is a collective document used by a search engine optimization company that outlines broad strategic SEO tasks, key opportunities and a step-by-step plan of action. This will help to more quickly achieve the goal of improving a website’s search engine performance. It is created at the beginning stage of an SEO campaign to provide an overview of detailed tactics, assigned individuals and target deadlines over a period of six to twelve months. SEO strategies are not set in stone, as amendments or changes can be made at any time of the project in accordance with the relevant trends and market changes in SEO. Due to this volatile nature, an SEO roadmap is also known as a”living” document.

What are the Benefits of SEO Roadmaps?

Like any strategy, an SEO roadmap benefits businesses in their campaigns. You can tailor the roadmap to meet your unique set of business priorities. The roadmap paves the way for stakeholders, clients and other team members to reach an understanding and agreement on the tasks that lie ahead for effective collaboration. With a solid plan, you can keep SEO marketing in track, measure activity results and achieve maximum ROI. Now let’s look at some stellar benefits of using a good SEO roadmap:

  • Align SEO efforts with business goals

An SEO roadmap is a strategic blueprint that aligns your team to the right business objectives. Your digital marketing team creates and employs it to boost your company’s search engine ranking. It also plots the course of your business’ success and if leveraged correctly, ensures that your marketing efforts bear fruit.

  • Getting collaborators on the same page

SEO roadmap is the collaboration point of SEO specialists, content creators, web developers, and the marketing and engineering of the product. They all must work together and centralize to achieve a successful SEO campaign. It also acts as a central document that clearly outlines and defines the roles of each department and assigns specific tasks to the responsible team, thereby streamlining the internal communication across all branches.

  • Prioritize SEO efforts with business goals

To receive the desired outcome, you must match the SEO strategy with the final business objectives. Using a roadmap helps you prioritize the initiatives that yield the highest results within the time limit for the intended business goals. For example, if your client’s purpose is to increase organic website traffic and drive sales, then implementing steps such as using the right keywords, producing high-quality, reliable blog content on a timely basis, conducting site audit and analyzing organic traffic results through platforms like Google Analytics helps accomplish the goals.

  • Optimize SEO for maximum ROI

When you diligently lay out all the task details, it is easier to structure and divide the process into smaller, manageable tasks that allows you to capitalize on quick wins. Quick wins are a great way to implement minimal development tasks on content that already exists such as updating Meta description or fixing broken links. The advantage of quick wins is that you can see that minor changes generate some traction for your website right away and improve your ranking within a couple of weeks or months. In this way you can anticipate outcomes in advance and adjust larger projects accordingly to ensure optimized SEO.

Tips to Build a Good SEO Roadmap

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How to Build a Good SEO Roadmap

To construct an effective SEO roadmap, you should have an understanding of the following preliminary and ongoing multiple stages involved. Here are some tips on how to build an SEO roadmap:

  1. Define and assess key SEO tasks

Clearly define your SEO tasks by assessing your current standing. An overall viewpoint of the project’s status will provide your insight regarding which action items are to be completed on the basis of impact, time and priority. Each roadmap will differ according to the unique factors present in a project. Conduct a comprehensive audit of your website to identify the strengths, weaknesses, errors, first priority actions and opportunities for areas of improvement.

  • Audit and analyze the website traffic
  • Conduct keyword research
  • Check for and fix any broken links
  • Create new website content and delete duplicate ones
  • Optimize Metadata such as Meta title and Meta description with relevant keywords
  • Implement schema markup
  • Include visual aspects like images and videos for retaining visitors
  • Review and regularly update website content
  • Monitor SEO trends and adjust strategies accordingly
  • Investigate website speed rate, security and user experience
  • Build high-quality back links from authority news sites and blogs
  • Conduct a competitive analysis

SEO consulting services employ software that automates the SEO audits to present a concise, detailed and understandable report for the client. It’s then possible to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals for the action steps to keep you on track.

  1. List out your business goals

The primary actions included in the SEO analysis should align with the client’s business goals. Not all SEO strategies are needed for all projects, so it is important that you consider only those that are beneficial for the company’s objectives. Effective utilization of resources saves time, effort and money so write out the list of overarching tasks to be implemented in accordance with the business goals.

For example, if you are working for an e-commerce business client then your focus is on improving online sales. This is done by optimizing the product website to generate organic traffic growth, gain new customers through online exposure and generate more revenue. So, the main goal here is to drive organic growth for the company and hence, implement SEO strategies that pertain to this goal.

  1. Define and review tasks list

The next integral step is to define and create the entire to-do list to be attained at the end of the SEO campaign based on goals listed. You can create an action priority matrix, also known as Eisenhower matrix, which is a task management tool to organize workflow based on urgency and importance. The tool divides tasks as:

  • Quick wins
  • Major projects
  • Fill-ins
  • Thankless tasks

Refining your larger list to focus on tasks mentioned above provides a framework to make informed decisions, streamline workload and maximize productivity. For example, if the task is to update the website to rank higher in the search engine results page for a geographical location, you can break it down into smaller chunks as follows:

  • Conduct in-depth research about the specific geographical locations that you target and extract traffic by various criteria to understand the local culture, cultural nuances and the preferred languages of this region.
  • Assign the data to the SEO team to analyze, identify and strategize the actions to take
  • Translate all the website content including text, images and other visual medias into the required languages
  • Include region-specific keywords, meta tags and language-specific URL, hreflang tags and CDNs
  • Launch localized versions of your website
  • Analyze the traffic from specific regions and evaluate their performance

The above tasks involve contribution from various departments such as SEO specialists, content writers and creators, technical development and support teams.

  1. Plan workflow and add timeline

The next step is to plan out the workflow to assign tasks to the responsible team members. While planning out the tasks, it is equally important to understand and identify the resources available to allocate for each project. Assess the required resources needed for each department by:

Allocate your resources according to the highest priority in the task list and have realistic expectations about what you can achieve with the available resources. The success of an SEO campaign lies in attaining the maximum possible outcome and ROI within the given budget of a project. Create a SEO roadmap that details instructions and outlines the workflow for your staff to follow so they can complete the work on time.

After you’ve set the workflow and resources, SEO roadmap should feature a timeline to give a rough idea of how long each of the action items should take to complete. Depending upon the duration and goals of each project, the timeline can vary from 6 months to more than a full calendar year. Within this timeline, divide the tasks into phases consisting of goals to be tracked and check the progress. This establishes a seamless workflow that eases the workload burden, reduces chances of mistakes and gives your team a pre-planned schedule to follow.

To add timeline for the SEO roadmap, you should:

  • Enter the number of days or weeks allocated for each task in the respective month column
  • Maintain a half-day or full day interval
  • Consult the team leaders or members for approving the time given
  • Format and arrange your time estimates to flow in a Gantt chart-style
  1. Monitor your performance and update the roadmap

With SEO roadmap, it’s easy to get distracted by the planning side of things, but you shouldn’t forget to continuously monitor and measure your website SEO performance in the search results. The element of a successful SEO strategy lies in ongoing analysis to keep the roadmap agile and relevant. Add a section to regularly track and update the status of each measurement metric of SEO. You should employ tools such as Google Analytics to measure the SEO KPI metric:

  • Direct traffic
  • Organic traffic
  • Paid search traffic
  • Search visibility
  • Conversion rate
  • Keyword ranking
  • SERP features
  • Bounce rate and engagement rate
  • Scroll depth
  • SEO site health
  • Competitor analysis
  • Website speed and security
  • Backlink profile

Monitoring these above metrics is important to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts and help stakeholders understand whether your SEO campaign yields the desired outcome. If the results aren’t what you expected, then you should identify which part of the SEO strategy fell off. So, regular revision and updating the strategy is important for continuous improvement. Remain flexible and adjust wherever necessary, such as assigning the role of leader from one team member to another, or removing a team member if they’re not suitable for the given task. Conduct scheduled meetings with staffs to discuss goals, room for improvements, setbacks and individual opinions. Finally, appreciate and recognize positive work to motivate your team and reinforce a collaborative mindset.

Final thoughts

Crafting a fully defined SEO roadmap can be a game-changer for any organization, if leveraged effectively. Aligning the goals, resources and strategies of SEO for the respective business will unearth opportunities to reach the intended end result and impact your success. It takes effort to track each project from start to end, so create the roadmap with a simple spreadsheet detailing the entire SEO strategy to make it accessible and easy to understand. Keep the guidelines outlined above in mind while developing your roadmap and achieve your most challenging SEO goals with ease.

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Are You Skipping These Vital Recurring SEO Tasks?

Are You Skipping These Vital Recurring SEO Tasks?

Due to the dynamic nature of digital marketing, it takes more than a basic understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) to stay ahead of the competition. Businesses are investing organic SEO services to drive results with high-quality content, strategic keyword placement, and ethical link-building practices.

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The goal of SEO is to enhance a website’s visible in search results. Implementing an effective SEO strategy with the help of an experienced digital marketing agency can drive targeted traffic to your website and increase revenue over time. However, SEO is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. To get good results, you need to nurture your campaign. This means paying attention to recurring SEO tasks.

Importance of Recurring SEO Tasks

After launching an SEO campaign, you cannot expect to simply sit back and watch the results roll in. This approach may work for sponsored advertisements and a fresh website design. Once you set them up, you don’t have to do much except for some maintenance and periodical updates. These projects will continue to produce results with these minor efforts.

SEO doesn’t work like this. It requires continuous work to achieve and sustain results.

SEO, when properly implemented, will lead to increase traffic and income over time. However, result pages are dynamic. Rankings shift as a result of new websites being made, pages being added to already-existing websites, and continual efforts by businesses to outperform each other.

Focusing on recurring SEO tasks is essential keep up with these developments and stay at the top of search results If you ignore this, don’t be surprised if website loses its ranking.

7 Recurring SEO Tasks to Perform Regularly

There are many moving components in SEO. Paying attention to these recurring tasks can help you drive positive results and maintain them.

Recurring SEO Tasks Checklist

  • Pay attention to poorly performing keywords: As previously stated, the search landscape is constantly changing, therefore it’s critical to keep an eye on every facet of your SEO efforts. This also applies to target keywords. For instance, one of your most crucial phrases might have been the subject of a blog post you published a year ago. Assume that “fresh dried tea leaves” was the keyword. You conducted extensive keyword research before publishing your blog post, discovered that this particular term will help you rank well in search results, and it did. But after a few months, search results show that people are no longer using this keyword, causing your post’s rankings to drop. This means that further keyword research is necessary to identify a term to replace the current one.

    One of the most crucial ongoing SEO responsibilities is monitoring your keywords because they determine how well you rank for the searches that bring in business.

  • Publish fresh content: After conducting keyword research and analyzing current keyword data, content creation is the logical next step. If the adage “content is king” sounds familiar to you, it’s a good SEO guideline to follow. Since content is ultimately what ranks in search engine results pages, it is unquestionably king.Your web pages are unlikely to rank at all if they lack valuable, high-quality content. Therefore, it’s crucial to publish material complies with these requirements. However, regularly producing new, original material and sharing it online is just as crucial as producing valuable content. Google looks for fresh content and posting quality content on a regular basis demonstrates to the search engine giant that your company is expanding and offering new content to site visitors Naturally, the more fresh material you publish, the greater the chance that you will rank higher in Google’s search results pages.
  • Perform regular page speed tests: Loading speed influences bounce rates. Google ranks websites based on their page speed. Having said that, it’s critical that you include “check page speed” in your continuing SEO routine. You can accomplish this by using programs like Pingdom, which will provide you with useful data regarding your website, including site performance. From there, you can take the required actions to improve the speed and functionality of your website.
  • Review your content: Make sure to regularly check your top-ranking content for clarity, quality, and relevancy if you want to make sure it stays high on the search results page. It is Google’s responsibility to deliver the highest caliber and most pertinent information to users. For this reason, you should review older content every few months. When reviewing the content of your website, make sure to look for the following:
    • Time-sensitive data: To demonstrate to readers that a statistic is pertinent, you probably would match it with a date. After a few months, the date may lose its relevance, even though the material is still pertinent. It is important that pay attention to time-sensitive content to ensure that your information doesn’t seem outdated to readers.
    • Quality concerns: You should also review the content’s quality. If fresh content, doesn’t attract the expected traffic, it’s most likely that it lacks quality. Given that Google is already aware of the web page, improving the existing content would be the best course of action in this situation. Try adding some multimedia and some unique new keywords.
    • Outdated keywords: Look for underperforming keywords when you’re scanning existing content. Consider replacing them with fresh keywords that have a similar meaning but perform better.
    • Update your meta descriptions and title tags with new keywords: Don’t forget to add new target keywords to your meta descriptions and title tags. Update those two areas to reflect any changes you make to the target keywords in your text.
    • Ensure high-quality calls to action: One of the best methods to move visitors down the sales funnel is to include effective calls to action on your website pages. After viewing a page, clicking on a call to action button is the next logical step toward conversion. These buttons take users to a page where they can provide contact details, learn more, or convert.
    • Create a robust internal linking structure: A strong internal linking structure is one of the best ways to ensure that Google indexes every page of your website. Adding new links to new pages to old content will make your website look interconnected. This encourages visitors to stay on your website longer and aids Google in indexing your content more quickly.
    • Regularly check for broken links: Broken links are not only ugly to users of your pages, but they also appear ugly to search engines like Google. You must regularly examine your pages for broken links if you want to maintain them trustworthy. More often than you may think, you can find yourself with a broken link if a picture gets removed from your server or if a page on your site gets redirected and you neglect to take the required action. To find broken links on any of your pages, try using a Chrome extension like SEO Minion.

    • Monitor and assess performance regularly: You might as well not have a website at all if you aren’t monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of your website and its pages. If you don’t monitor its performance, you won’t see important clues that something isn’t quite right. A page may see a decline in traffic if there are broken links, missing information, or a more serious issue. Analytics can assist you in resolving any issue and getting the page back up and running before you start losing money.
    • Make your website design function well: if you have eye-catching videos or interactive elements on your website, make sure they are functioning well. While these components contribute to making a website engaging and visually appealing, it’s crucial to see that they’re operating as intended.

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    Ignoring these critical SEO tasks can severely hamper your website’s performance and visibility. Partnering with a reliable provider of organic SEO services can go a long way in improving and maintaining your website’s performance.