STEP 2

Website Design

Make sure that you are familiar with Google’s Panda Update. This is a new but incredibly important factor for SEOs and Inbound Marketers. Panda takes into account the Social Media Metrics and the design of your website. Make sure that your web design is compliant with Panda Update best practice.

Transferring Domains?

If you are redesigning a pre-existing website, changing your domain name or re-jigging your branding, then make sure that you are up to date with the Go Up best practices for Domain Transfers and Redesigns.

STEP 3

Choose your technology

Choose the technologies that you are going to build your website in. We recommend using HTML and CSS as the basis for all websites, wherever possible. Avoid basing a website in Flash, Java, JavaScript and AJAX. These technologies can be used as cool snippets to spice up the site, but only to spruce up the HTML and CSS. Search Engines find it extremely difficult to read the content of anything that is not based in HTML or CSS, and if the Search Engines can’t read it, it can’t rank it.

Chose a good, SEO friendly Content Management System

A poor, non-SEO friendly Content Management System (CMS) can cause havoc to any websites SEO efforts, creating duplicate content problems and not allowing many on-site optimisations to be performed. Make sure that you use an SEO friendly, extremely flexible and adjustable CMS system.

Research your Keyword Phrases

Now that you are familiar with Google’s governing principles, and how its algorithms select which websites to rank and which ones to tank, it is time to get cracking on the optimisation process. Keyword Research is the basis of any SEO campaign. You should not even begin to plan your website architecture, design or strategy until you have decided upon a set of key keyword phrases to target.

Plan your Website Content

If we had to pinpoint the single most important inbound marketing factor for any website, it would be the website’s content. At Go Up we believe that Content Creation is the most essential part of any SEO/ SMM (social media marketing) campaign. It is also the most time consuming stage. Find that time, and put in 100% of your effort. It will pay off.

Plan your Information Architecture

Building an easily navigable, sensible Information Architecture (or website navigational structure) is critical, both to Inbound Marketing and all-round user experience. Make sure that this site navigation is Conversion Optimised.

STEP 4

Control your internal Link Juice

Controlling Internal Link Juice is an important SEO tactic. We discussed Link Juice in Link Metrics. Link Juice is the amount of ranking juice passed by a link from one web page to another. It is important to control the flow of link juice throughout your site, so that it is spread evenly throughout. This will give the best chance for all of your pages to rank, which in turn helps in the targeting of the long tail keywords and elevates your overall domain rank. You also want to make sure that you are not passing link juice to pages that would serve no purpose in the rankings, such as ‘contact’ pages. You can do this by the use of NoFollow Tags , Robots Tags and Robots.txt and Google Parameter Blocking

Optimise your Meta Tags and Meta Data

Meta Tags and Meta Data are some of the first on-page indicators looked at by the Search Engines, which use them to help identify the content and relevancy of the webpage. Their relevancy to SEO has diminished significantly in the past five years, but they are still a very good starting point for any optimisation strategy. If your Meta Data is relevant to a Google search request, your website will be ranked in the search results pages. Where it is ranked depends on your link metrics, social media metrics and brand exposure across the web, as well as the many other factors that are discussed in this guide. Be warned, Meta Tags are often subject to extremely Spammy activity. Avoid spam at all costs.

Optimise your alt attibutes and noscripts

IThe Alt Attribute was initially designed to help the visually impaired understand the content of an image. Search Engine Spiders read the contents of the Alt Attribute, hoping to learn more about the image and the page that it is on. Make sure that the content of the Alt Attribute accurately describes the image, and avoid putting keywords in there that are not related to the image itself. The NoScriptworks on a similar premise to the Alt Attribute. It should be used to describe the content of a video or Flash animation. Again, make it relevant and non-spammy.

Optimise your anchor text

Anchor Text is the text used in a hyperlink. Every hyperlink that you see on this page has anchor text. It describes the page that a link links to, and is an important ranking factor in SEO and inbound marketing. When a search engine spider is trying to understand the content of a web page, it will often look at the anchor text of all incoming links for clues. It is therefore a key ranking factor. Make sure that all of your internal hyperlinks are optimised to be accurate descriptions of the web pages that they are linking to. The same applies to any incoming links- see if you can’t request that they are relevant, unique and specific. Don’t over-optimise all of your anchor text, as this can be seen as a sign of spam.

Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate Content is a major problem in the world of inbound marketing and SEO. A website is only as good as its content. For content to be truly great, it must be unique. It cannot be unique if there are multiple copies of it across the web. This confuses the search engines, as they see multiple versions of the same content, and must decide which ones to rank and which ones to remove from the results pages.

Duplicate Content is one of the biggest problems facing any web publisher, and must be identified and rectified. Useful tools for removing duplicate content are the 301-Redirect, Rel=Canonical Tag, Robots NoIndex, Rel=Prev/ Rel=Next Function, the Syndication/ Source Tag and Google Parameter BlockingBetween these nifty techniques, you should be able to do away with any duplicate content issues. It is worth paying particular attention Duplicate URL Issues.

STEP 5

Submit to Online Directories

Now that you’re happy with your onsite optimisation, it’s time to submit yourself to Online Directories in SIngapore. This is a great way to generate thousands of brand impressions across the net, which helps your rankings. It will also send you plenty of direct traffic from the directories regular users. Furthermore, it allows Google and chums to compile vital information about your business. Choose wisely- there are many poor quality and spammy directories out there. Make sure to perform a thorough check of any directory that you are considering submitting to. Follow the instructions in Submitting to Online Directories and you will be fine!

Begin your link building campaign.

Link Building is still one the most important ranking factors. It is absolutely vital to create a link-building culture within your office. Requesting links should be second nature, and should be done every day, not every month. If you avoid spammy Link Building, and stick to white-hat links and plenty of them, the rewards will be quick and plenty.

STEP 6

Optimise for the Search Engine Verticals

Optimising for Vertical Search provides a vast array of opportunities for any inbound marketing strategy. The results are often staggering, frequently surpassing traditional optimisation in traffic volumes and conversion ratios.

Optimise for Local Search

We have put this near the end intentionally. To have a successful local SEO campaign, it is first important to tick all of the standard SEO boxes. As long as your regular optimisation efforts are well under way, Optimising for Local Search is fairly straightforward, but the rewards are often breathtaking!

STEP 7

Utilise the power of User Reviews

User Reviews are a crucial factor in both consumer confidence and in Google’s ranking algorithms. Not only does it prove to Google, Bing, Yahoo and your target consumer that you are a trusted site, it also increases your brand mentions across the Internet, which ticks another major box in the world of search. Make sure that user reviews are included in your website, and try to persuade happy clients to write positive reviews on multiple reviewing sites.

Social Media Marketing

It is a time consuming, ongoing process, but one that will produce heaps of benefits in the long run. Getting in touch with Singapore Influencers, find the right local communities, Social Media Marketing not only greatly accelerates a brand’s progression up the Search Engine Results Pages, but it also gains you a vast amount of traffic directly from the Social Media Platforms. Use it well.

STEP 8

Analyse your Campaign

Tracking the successes of your SEO campaign takes time and commitment. But it is a process that must be done, especially if you have spent considerable resources and time in optimising your website in the first place.

Performing ongoing Performance Analytics on your campaign is vital for its success: work out what’s working and what isn’t, and then hypothesise, trial and refine. Regular analytics will provide you with a wealth of knowledge. Knowing how many backlinks, retweets, shares and likes is crucial to running a great campaign.

For more detailed and specific user behaviour information, place Action Tracking Code on your website, and learn exactly how your users interact with your brand.