When it comes to a successful digital marketing campaign, there are 3 SEO pillars that we like to focus on. Search engines use an advanced form of information retrieval in order to bring you the best results possible. This is why, instead of using SEO as a “treating the symptoms” system where we identify issues with your site and apply the fixes, we look at it from the information retrieval point of view. By changing the way we look at SEO, we can better understand what we need to do in order to improve your rankings. This also allows us to see through those new “Best SEO practice for this month!” tactics and to determine whether those tactics actually fit with how search engines work.
SEO has evolved drastically in the past 5 years alone, but there are 3 core elements that have stood the test of time. These 3 SEO pillars are the foundation to any successful campaign. A campaign without them can guarantee a disappointment-filled contract. These 3 SEO pillars are Structure, Content, and Authority.
The 3 SEO Pillars
- Structure: The underlying structure of your website. This includes the HTML code, URL structure, HTTP status codes, XML Sitemaps, Robots.txt file, and much more.
- Content: Title tags & meta descriptions, headers, content structure, readability, topical focus, and everything else content oriented on your website.
- Authority: Trustworthiness of your website. Your authority is built on links and citations. This sends the right signals to search engines that your website is a trusted source.
SEO Pillar #1: Structure
Structure is the first thing we look at when starting an SEO campaign. A website’s structure is all about making sure search engines can crawl and index all of your content and in the right way. This means having clean HTML code, properly structured and human-friendly URLs (with no parameters, if at all possible), the right HTTP status codes for the right kind of webpages (so a Not Found page results in a 404 code, not a 200 or 302), proper XML sitemaps, etc.
Most SEO audits will spend a lot of time on a website’s core structure, and the platform a site is built on will have a great deal of impact on how SEO-friendly a website’s structural underpinnings actually are. WordPress sites tend to tick a lot of boxes straight away, while sites built on .NET can often be total SEO nightmares.
SEO Pillar #2: Content
Now that the website structure has been analyzed and fixed we move on to the content. When search engines can crawl your site’s content, that doesn’t mean they know what your content is about. The relevance aspect of SEO looks at the various elements of your content to ensure it can be properly interpreted by search engines.
This means having optimized title tags and headlines, properly structured content, sufficient topical focus on a single page, including the right semantic signals, etc. Writing great SEO-friendly content is now more important than ever. Basic SEO audits will focus on this aspect of your website.
SEO Pillar #3: Authority
Now that your website structure is solid and your content is relevant, we move on to building your authority. As we all know, great content alone is not enough to rank well in search results for highly competitive keywords. You need to be seen as a trusted source, which is where the authority aspect comes in. With sufficient links from other trusted websites your site will be seen as trustworthy as well and search engines will rank your content higher in search results for relevant queries.
Let’s summarize the 3 SEO Pillars
In summary, by focusing on the structure, content, and authority of your website we build a strong foundation for your online presence. Over time, constant monitoring and editing can make you a powerhouse within the Google search engine. Understanding how the search engines work and the information retrieval that goes behind it leads to long-term, successful campaigns.
We at Ignition Digital Marketing have a burning passion for helping local businesses grow. SEO is a great way to drive relevant traffic to your website and help convert that traffic into paying customers.
If you are interested in growing your business using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the power of the internet, please feel free to contact us.