There are three questions I always ask at the start of an SEO engagement, and despite the fact that technical SEO is my strong suit, none of the three questions are technical at all! Instead, they reflect SEO problems that might be hiding in plain sight. They’re just so obvious that most marketers don’t even stop to think about them – and sometimes, it’s really hurting their business. Here we go:
1. Do you have a page for each product or service?
Many B2B websites have just one long “Products and Services” page, where they list everything they do. This is a terrible approach for almost every business. It loses on all fronts: The pages are huge, slow, hard to navigate for potential customers, of low value in the search engine’s eyes, extremely difficult to optimize for search, and not very useful at all once you start running ad campaigns. Most visitors who click on an ad or search result do so because they want a specific answer or solution to their problem. Don’t dump them into a giant bucket of everything you’ve ever done.
2. Are you using a modern content management system (CMS), one that provides a good user experience?
Modern CMSs solve so many problems for you: They look great on all sorts of devices (from huge desktop computer monitors to tiny smartphone screens), they load quickly, they can accommodate plugins that give allow you to fine tune how your site operates to suit your business goals, and they offer a sturdy platform for expanding and extending your content as needs arise. The worst thing in the world is to invest in SEO keyword research and discovery, only to find that you can hardly take advantage of it because your website’s backend is simply too rigid to accommodate adding the new pages you need and expanding those you have.
3. What’s the website’s context in your organization? Is it a business priority?
No one can look at a website as it appears at this moment, and have a meaningful sense of the real SEO opportunity there. You need to know what the organization is willing and able to invest in that site. There are many different ways to approach a problem; a good digital marketing firm will tailor their approach to the organization’s resources. Do you have people on staff who can write new content? Do you have the resources to bring in a writer? Are you still working with the original web design firm—or open to hiring someone new to do a deep dive and come up with a site architecture that supports a more comprehensive SEO strategy?
Learn More on Our Podcast: The Crux
SEO is a complex and ever-changing topic, and you might not have enough reading time to stay up to date. We dedicated the second episode of our podcast just to common SEO problems, and how a business can start to identify and resolve them. So if you’d like to learn more, check it out!