SEO

Search Engine Optimisation  (SEO) of a business website should address the following issues.

Keyword Research:

Keyword research is the foundation of SEO, as it helps you identify the most relevant and valuable keywords to target in your website’s content. To perform keyword research, you can use various tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Keyword Explorer. These tools can help you identify keywords with high search volume and low competition, as well as related keywords that you can target in your content.

On-Page Optimization:

On-page optimization involves optimizing your website’s content and structure to make it more search engine friendly. This includes optimizing your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and internal linking structure. You should also make sure your website’s content is well-organized and easy to read, with relevant keywords used naturally throughout.

Off-Page Optimization:

Off-page optimization includes activities that are performed outside your website to improve its visibility and credibility. This includes building high-quality backlinks from other reputable websites, social media marketing, and content marketing. You can also participate in online communities and forums related to your industry to build your brand’s reputation.

Technical SEO:

Technical SEO involves optimizing your website’s technical aspects to ensure that it is accessible, user-friendly, and fast. This includes optimizing your website’s mobile responsiveness, site speed, URL structure, and sitemap. You should also make sure your website is secure by using HTTPS and implementing other security measures.

Local SEO:

Local SEO involves optimizing your website for local search results, which is especially important for businesses that serve a local market. This includes optimizing your website for local keywords, creating local business listings on Google My Business, and getting customer reviews. You can also use local directories and other local search platforms to improve your website’s visibility.

Analytics and Reporting:

Analytics and reporting help you track and measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. You should use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to track your website’s traffic, keyword rankings, backlinks, and other metrics. This will help you identify areas where you can improve your SEO strategy and make data-driven decisions to optimize your website for better results.

Overall, implementing these main contents of SEO for a business website can help improve your website’s online visibility, attract more customers, and increase your revenue. However, it’s important to note that SEO is an ongoing process, and you need to continually monitor and optimize your website to maintain your search engine rankings and keep up with changing trends and algorithms

Digital Marketing and SEO Analysis and Plan for https://examplewebsite.com, a fake website.

Introduction

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or unpaid (“organic”) search results. It is an art or skill to rank websites better on search engines for a specific keyword. Ranking is mostly done through enhancing a website’s or webpage’s contents through different techniques. SEO is one such technique available. SEO is one of the ways of increasing the visibility of a website. It can enhance a website’s performance when it is supported by other digital marketing techniques such as social media, AdWords, and brand campaigns.  

Google currently provides about 75% of the searches. Thus, we closely follow Google requirements and guidelines while we also need to adhere to the requirements of other standards and search providers. 

This document contains a brief SEO and digital marketing analysis of https://examplewebsite.com and its performance. https://examplewebsite.com is an hypothetical company and the data in this document is all for educational purposes and do not reflect any real website. At the end of each section I included ways to improve the performance, visibility and accessibility of the site. This document is open for discussion, suggestion and continuous improvement.  

Detail Digital Marketing and SEO Analysis

1. Meta Tags 

Meta tags are crucial SEO stuff. They explain to the search engines about the website, what is on pages, what is the business dealing with, etc. 

• Title Meta tags: Each page of the site must have its own unique title tag. Currently all the pages in the site have the same title tags. This is a bad mistake because the search engine crawlers consider all these pages as one. Such practice can undermine the credibility of the site and can lead to penalties which affects the ranking.

Recommendation: Keyword rich title tags need to be developed for each page in the website. The length of the title is limited to a limited number of characters and this must be followed

• Keyword Meta tags: Keywords are crucial aspects of SEO, at least for now. Semantic web is changing this faster. But for now the type and count of the keywords contained in the site are the determining factors for page ranking. Currently there are no keyword tags in any of the pages. There is no limit on keyword listing, but the keyword must be carefully researched, tested and included in pages contents, title tags, description tags and so on. 

Recommendation: Keywords related to the business objectives need to be researched and included in each page. There are recommendations from the experts to emphasise on two or more word phrases. These recommendations come from a study of users’ search behaviour. Users mostly use two or more search words. 

• Description Meta tag: This tag tells the search engines all about the organisation. As they appear with the search engine results, care needs to be taken on choosing descriptive phrases. Currently no description tags are found in any of the pages. The search engines allow a limited number of characters. Google for example allows about 160 characters including whitespaces. 

Recommendation: Carefully chosen and well-articulated descriptive statements need to be developed and included on each page. 

• H tags: H tags are one of the SEO techniques. There are recommendations on how to use the number of each H tag (h1, h2, ..) and the length of their texts. For example only one H1, 4 H2, and 5 H3 tags are allowed while as many as the other are allowed.   The text we use for H tags is the most important element.  They need to be  keywords rich and bear important messages.  Currently there are no H tags in the site.

Recommendation: Important texts in the site need to be included in the H tags 

• Image names and alt tags: Naming images using the selected keywords provides another opportunity for SEO. It is known that images can only be indexed and searched by their names and their alt tags. Thus, images names and their alt tags need to be renamed to the keywords that fit to the overall SEO strategy. Currently the existing images were named randomly and this has to be changed. The Alt tags used are completely void of keywords and the used words are not related to the business of the organisation. 

Recommendation: All the images and their alts need to be changed, selected and targeted keywords. 

2. Content on the website= HTML/Text Ration 

Search engines rely solemnly on the type and size of content on the page. The type of content on the page (image, text, video etc.) and size (how many words, how many keywords and phrases) are the only ways pages can be indexed and thus searched.  Search engines at the moment can only index text. Thus, this is the season why we are concerned about image names and alt tags naming. The existence of a large volume of text on the page is thus an advantage in this regard. But the words and phrases better serve the website if they are good keywords that are related to what the site is meant for. The more the words are linked or anchored the better they are indexed.  Google and other search engines recommend a 20% html/text radio though this ratio is now 10.65% only 

Recommendations: more keyword rich content needs to be added specially to the home page. More contents can go on the other pages. Blog can be created and more content can be added to it. 

3. URL and link structure  

URL (Uniform resource locator) is one of the important elements in SEO. They should be descriptive, short, and readable for both humans and machines. They usually take the title of the pages or posts.  The existing urls are perfect and the same method needs to be followed in the future pages and posts. 

Recommendations: https://examplewebsite.com is more memorable and can better be positioned in the business’s context.

• Broken link: If any broken link exists on a page it does not only limit the functioning of the site but also incur penalty for the page’s ranking. Currently there is no broken link in the site.    
• Recommendation: none, but continued check-up is recommended.  But there are some buttons which do not function and needs repairs 

4. W3C Validation 

W3C validation has become one of the measuring parameters for search engines. It is a standard requirement and needs to be watched. As HTML5 is still under research the issue with w3c sometimes cannot be resolved.  Currently there are a couple of errors and warnings reported from the analysis on the https://examplewebsite.com.

Recommendation: Fixing these errors and solving the warning is needed. 

5. Enhancing loading speed: Speed is one factor that enhances users’ experience on the site. Loading speed can be enhanced by avoiding the inclusion of scripts and externally loadable contents 
6. Dublin Core: Dublin Core is a mark-up for information about the site. This standard was set and agreed in Dublin, Ohio. The mark-up helps to include some code that is compactly expressed to describe the website, its content and owners. Dublin Core is used to enable Semantic based SEO. 

Recommendation: This is a lightweight code that does not have any impact on the pages loading and it is desirable to include it. 

7. Language Meta tag: This tag tells the crawlers what language is in the site. Using a language tag facilitates indexing and displays. Currently no language tag in the site. 

Recommendation: Adding language tag for English language. This is a single line code, but important.

8. XML Sitemap 

Sitemap, as the name indicates, is a map of the site. Currently xml is the standard format for sitemap. It is possible to have html based sitemap as well. Sitemap helps both the visitors and crawlers a clear indication of the architecture of the site and the location information. The xml sitemap is mostly used by crawlers while the html one by humans. Both increase the accessibility of the site and make the users’ experience easier.  Xml sitemap is included in the root directory of the site. There is no html sitemap. No video sitemap as well.

Recommendation: The html site needs to be created and included. If there are videos on the site or hosted in YouTube, video sitemaps need to be created and submitted. The xml sitemap needs continuous upgrading to follow the changes on the site. 

9.  Major Social media Activity 

Social media is increasingly becoming the users’ engagement platform. They are very useful for undertaking research, targeting users’, and measuring business success. Social media engagement must be continuous and uninterrupted. Currently https://examplewebsite.com social media activities are limited. It is none existent in some cases as indicated in the following table

Recommendation: Social media accounts need to be created and actively go out to the users. The power of social media in building brand awareness is tremendous and the opportunity needed to be grabbed by https://examplewebsite.com. 

10. Mobile Friendliness: As research and experiences indicate more and more people are now using small devices such as IPhone, iPad and other smartphones. Currently the website has a viewport tag which makes the site responsive and accessible by small screen devices. 
11. Google local listing: Listing the business in the local market place makes the business accessible. Moreover, listing businesses in Google local listing comes with the advantages of getting Google+ account which is increasingly becoming one of the social media platforms. The other special advantage of google local business listing is that google map can be displayed with the search results of the site. 

Recommendations: Google local listing is a free service and thus listing the business is advantageous

12. Google Apps for business: Google provides cloud based business integration services for a reasonably fair fee. Google apps for business can be used to create own domain email accounts.  Google Drive provides an online space where files can be stored and accessed from anywhere. The online MS Office package apps help multiple employees to work on the same file at the same time, and share the files easily. Some people say opening such an account with Google enhances website’s trust and thus ranking.

Recommendations: Getting google business apps facilitate business undertaking and thus it is recommended to have one. 

13. Google Master tool and Google Analytics tools.

These two tools are free of charge and they provide a valuable service for the websites that use them. Google master tool helps to submit and index pages including sitemaps, while google analytics provides valuable data and information on number of visitors, their location, the devices they used and other insights into the business undertakings. It is also possible to integrate social media accounts and see the number of visitors from social media undertakings. 

Recommendations: Getting these google accounts facilitates business undertaking and thus it is recommended to have one.

14. Google AdWords and AdSense: These two are Google’s paid search access and ranking supports. Accounts can be created with good keywords or phrases. These words/phrases will be displayed with search results on the right hand of the page. Most of these adverts are pay per click (PPC), but there are other forms like affiliate network schemes as well.

Recommendation: These can be a good way of improving accessibility of the site. Since these require budget it needs to be well planned

15.  Traffic and Ranks 

The analysis of the traffic and ranking of the site are insignificant as shown in the following table. The fact that the domain trust is green is good. The rank is decreasing as a result of both decreasing traffic to the site and the increasing traffic to other websites. 

Alexa	Rank	Homepage rank	Domain Webzyrank	Doman trust
None		3	2.2	Green

 Recommendation: The overall change planned in SEO will hopefully change the traffic and ranking, thus pushing with the plan is very important

16. Branding and brand campaign:  A brand is a symbol, phrase or words that represent, and carry the values, qualities, services and reputation of an organisation. Thus branding is very important. Currently https://examplewebsite.com has a unique brand logo embedded into the website. There is however a need to make a brand campaign for the brand to be well known and easily recognised from other brands. 

Recommendation: 

• Brand campaigns can be integrated into social media accounts and activities, letterheads, email footers. 
• Getting at least one of the domains in the name such as .eu can make the brand easily memorable and makes brand based marketing effective. 
• The background colour of the logo needs to be changed to other colours than white so that its visibility can be enhanced. 
• The word in the logo is related to the business, and uniquely identifies the organisation. But the phrase “marketplace” may incorporate additional unrelated information to the business.   

17. Link structure analysis: Linking is one of the ways to get ranked high in search results. It is not the website that we link to that matters more, it is the one that links our site to theirs. Linking down is not only useless but also can incur the site a penalty. While linking to a website with better ranking is desirable, getting such linking is not always possible for obvious reasons.

Recommendations: Linking to similar business directories, blogging, forums and becoming more visible in social media are some of the ways to approach linking strategy.   

18.  Competitors Analysis: Competitors’ analysis is the way of identifying the competitors’ business and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses in relation to our products or services. This helps us to get insights into their market share, and how well they are doing in targeting and reaching their customers. 

As identifying competitors requires a deep understanding of own business; I will hold competitors’ analysis for the moment. 

19. Redirects, hosting location, and domain extension need to be confirmed.
20. Submissions and indexing: As soon as the site is ready it is time to resubmit all the pages urls and sitemaps to search engine and directory listing providers.  Search engines index the site for display. Most of the search engines providers are free for submissions while others such as Yahoo are not.  

Note 

• Most of the above listed tasks are continued in nature. This means they need a continuous change, amendment and engagement. 
• There is no budget set for all the tasks. While most of them do not need any budget; tasks such as AdWords, Google Business Apps, and social media ads need some expenses.
• High ranking is not always guaranteed or does not come automatically. For the effect of SEO to show months may pass. This is because website ranking or page ranking is not the function of SEO and digital marketing only.
• As most of the tasks are continued no time frame is set.