Working for an integrated digital marketing agency presents you with many different and challenging opportunities to test and hone the skills of your discipline. In my case, that’s Organic Search Strategy. What’s that mean? I come up with, and implement, strategies that help websites show up in Google naturally.

Sometimes this is straight-forward and easy as the clients already have clear, established goals and KPIs. They come prepared with a very thorough understanding of who their ideal target customer is and what messaging it will take to reach them. They have a solid web dev team that implements your instructions promptly. The analytics show the value of the optimizations that are being implemented and life is good.

However, sometimes you get asked to audit the owner’s longtime friend’s website that he just built — true story. And, while it sounds like it would be dreadful, it was actually a lot of fun being able to provide insight into the complete development of a website while making sure that the focus is on the end result, driving improved organic search performance.

The website is about an artist and their artwork and the main focus is to increase organic search ranking for both “branded” and “non-branded” keyword terms as well as becoming the authority and thought leader for information about this artist.

Check out some of the recommendations we made below!

Introduce Your Website to Your Visitor

The Home Page of this website had zero text content so as a visitor, unless you are familiar with the artist, you have no idea what the website contains. This could result in visits from non-branded search queries to “bounce” from the Home Page instead of continuing further in to the website which could easily result in less sales or leads generated.

The Home Page is and should be viewed as the very top of the funnel as well as a landing page. The average time spent on the Home Page, specifically, does not need to be extensive, but it should be the starting point for a visitor to choose one of many different paths to the point of conversion. Make sure your Home Page welcomes a visitor to your website and guides them to the information they are looking for.

Potential Outcomes:

1. Improved User Engagement
2. Improved Sales/Lead Generation

Be Intentional with the Keywords

The Main Navigation of this website used some very general terms that could be more focused to indicate to the user and the search engines what content was going to be found if they clicked on the navigation item.

In this case the term “Work” was used which, while applicable, could be more focused as this menu item specifically talks about the artist’s art pieces. We recommended changing “Work” to “Artwork” as this uses a keyword that is applicable to the site as a whole while also indicating what a visitor is going to find if they click on that menu item.

Potential Outcomes:

1. Improved ranking for non-branded keyword terms
2. Improved visitor flow and experience on the website

Generate a Page for Each Painting

Currently, each of the artist’s paintings on the website is just an image and there is no real description or history of the painting. This is a missed opportunity as not having a page that is titled uniquely with the artwork piece’s name means that if a search is performed for the artwork by the name of the piece, this website will not show up.

1. This is very similar to how you would structure an e-commerce website with the individual artwork pages essentially being “Product” pages even if the artwork is not for sale
2. The unique pages should contain:
   1. Image(s) of the artwork – possibly a slide show
   2. Detailed description of the artwork and its history

Potential Outcomes:

1. Improved organic ranking for exact keyword match – artwork name
2. Improved organic ranking for “branded” and “non-branded” keyword terms due to a new page of content being added to the site that will be optimized for the most commonly searched “branded” and “non-branded” terms applicable to the page content and site as a whole

Create a Contact Page

This website did not have a Contact Page and all inquiries were being forwarded to another website and not even the Contact Page on that website, just the Home Page!

It is always good to provide a way for a visitor to your website to get in touch with you and a Contact Page can contain a form as well as direct contact information if this is information you want to provide to your visitor.

However, the one thing you should never do with a visitor is direct them away from your website, especially if it is to have them contact you about something on your website. This is poor user experience and if the “point of conversion” occurs on another website then the user may just end up bookmarking that web page and bypassing your website all together.

Potential Outcomes:

1. Better user experience
2. Increased lead generation

In summary, if you are building a new website or looking to revamp an existing site, it is important to approach the presentation of the site content from both the point of view of the visitor experience as well as the experience of the search engines so that the website will appear effectively in search results which should drive visitors to the website where they will find the information that they are looking for presented to them efficiently and  ultimately culminates in a positive user experience that reaches the point of conversion whether that be a new lead or a sale.

Interested in having your site reviewed and a strategy developed for improved Organic Search performance? Contact us today!