This past week I spent some time on site with some clients. I make a point of sitting down with clients regularly to make sure we stay up to date with what is going on in their world. SEO is an important part of every business these days, even if it is just for your site to get found to get a phone number or address by someone that already knows you by name.
Regular communications with clients about their business practices are important to the process of “baking” SEO into the continued improvement of the business. The whole concept of SEO is an organic growth of your business by creating better content, a better user experience, and better relationships because of how you do business. If you have to chase down your SEO provider to get answers or aren’t sure what they are even doing for you, you probably need to find someone else. An SEO plan should be built custom for your business in your industry and in your geographic target. Cookie cutter plans with no client interaction just don’t work anymore for the vast majority of markets.
DK Pittsburgh Sports
DK Sign at Highmark Stadium
I headed out to Pittsburgh last weekend to visit Dejan Kovacevic, Dali Kovacevic, and Taylor Haase of the DK Pittsburgh Sports staff, to discuss how their site is currently set up and how they can organize article structure and technical site aspects to get more out of what they are already doing. The idea is to tweak the process in a way that everyone can do without causing issues with their main functionality. With a business like this, they are constantly churning out content and news, so you don’t want to put big hurdles in the way of getting that information out to the public and their readers and listeners, but you also want to make sure you take advantage and build in structure that gets the most search value out of what they are already doing. We were able to discuss AMP, redirects, structured data, and new categorizing ideas to get the most out of their already great content. My job is to inform and set them up the best way possible and let them make informed decisions on how that information can best be integrated with their current business process. Often, it is just adding a plugin or site tweak that automates things or has a little setup and then takes care of itself. They just need to be made aware of the options and what keeps them up with or ahead of the industry.
CSAV Systems
Later in the week, I sat down with the staff at CSAV Systems to discuss some indexing issues that have come up and how we can resolve site structure issues to get them back on track.
Unfortunately, sometimes over time the Google algorithm and site growth and popularity may make certain aspects of your site structure that at one time didn’t cause a problem, suddenly cause big problems. Where crawl rate and efficiency with Google usually is only a big issue with bigger content-driven sites, some of the ways files had been stored on their site got hit with indexing issues with the latest Google algorithm and it caused some of their specific industry pages to lose their indexing. We sat down to address the business processes that caused the issue and then discuss with the developer the quickest way to restructure to get the problem fixed. Now we wait for Google to re-index these important pages to get them back on track with their strong site. We also got them back ahead of the curve on some other new SEO concerns and put the plan in place to get speed boosts built into the site, as that is a constant battle for all websites these days.
Important pages we need Google to start indexing:
- Corporate AV Installations
- Healthcare AV Installations
- Churches and Houses of Worship
- Fitness Centers
- Funeral Homes
- Many Other Industry Targets
Though there are a number of ways to get your pages indexed, getting your pages indexed after you have made adjustments can be one of the most frustrating parts of small business SEO. If you have Google Search Console you can do “Fetches” on specific url’s or your sitemap can be submitted, but there is no guarantee for instant indexing to see if your changes worked. It helps if Google finds those pages from other site links or links on social media, so those can be other ways to speed up the process.
Communication is Key with SEO
Staying in touch with the business owner is important to understand if the phones stopped ringing or the forms stopped filling. Sometimes that little tweak you thought you were making to the site or the plugin you installed without your developer can cause technical issues with the site that can lead to bigger issues that can put a halt to traffic. Though sometimes there are just natural ebbs and flows of the business, in the increasingly technical world of SEO, it is important to know about these lulls so we can try to spot and stop an issue before it has gotten too far down the road. If we can spot when it started, it is easier to address and get past.
On the positive side, most of your businesses interactions with the community can also help with the SEO, so being aware of local sponsorships and involvements that can lead to site links or blog posts can also be important pieces of communication or information that your SEO provider can turn into a tool in your favor that you weren’t even aware of. Make sure you know your SEO and they aren’t just a mysterious name behind an email that you send questions to every few months.
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