Website Optimization Roadmap
Sticky Notes and Sharpies to Rule The Online World!
Formulate Your Website Optimization Roadmap
The time has come for you to develop your own website optimization roadmap.
To start optimizing your site, you will need to create a document called a Keyword Map that organizes all your keywords, the related pages, and the content you need to create.
What Is a Keyword Map?
A Keyword Map sets up the organizational strategy for your website to maximize Findability. It is similar to a site map, which is a file that lists your website’s pages in hierarchical order. A keyword map tells the search engine how a site is structured.
Get Your Content Organized From The Ground Up
Most good web designers build site maps based on content provided by their clients. But they don’t organize it around the keywords that your prospects actually use.
Creating your Website Optimization Plan gives you the opportunity to start from the ground up to optimize your Findability. You are adding a crucial step to the organizational process. We’re asking you to slow down a bit:
- First, develop the keyword strategy;
- Then design the site map architecture.
This way, writing content that aligns with your keyword strategy is easy. You’ll see how all the pages of your website lay out, how they’ll come up in a search query, and stay there.
Who Stays Number One on the Search Engine Results Page?
Content that is highly relevant to what the searcher is looking for will keep you on page one of the search results.
Yes, there will be updates to the algorithm, but ultimately, content is king. Social media and blogging are the king’s ransom. Create great content, sift it thru the filter of text optimization and then spread the love on Social Media.
You’ll be able to keep pulling in great leads because you have been strategic about how you’ve structured your site and put all of the pages together. Everything will be based on your Marketing Espionage and keyword intelligence.
Think Beyond the Home Page
While the home page is very important for your website, a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs think it’s the only important page. This is simply not true.
This mistake is frequently based on guesswork rather than keyword research or in-depth competitive reconnaissance.
- Every page on your website has equal relevance based on its content. If you want to improve your Findability, you cannot be “homepage centric.”
- Realize that EVERY page on your website can rank under a different keyword phrase.
That is the objective of formulating your master plan and plotting your site architecture by keyword and content. This way, both search engines and your ideal prospects can “get crazy about it”.
As we dig into constructing your keyword map, you need to identify the top keyword phrases for every single page of your website.
Doing a keyword research is similar to asking the person in the customer service department to give you a list of the most common employee complaints or needs.
Once you have them, you can provide answers to their burning questions. Right away you will discover an increase in website performance.
Plotting Your Hierarchy – Website Optimization and Search Engines
Let’s take a step back so you gain a broader understanding of why you need a keyword map. Google looks for sites that demonstrate expertise and authority on some type of content. Google is NOT all knowing and all seeing. You have got to prove it. Are you a one trick pony or are you a real thought leader? A Professor in your field.
Google was first developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, graduate students who wanted access to all their professors’ papers right away, rather than waiting years for them to be officially published.
Read more about the Google Founders.
Because of this original purpose, the Google robot still looks for “professorship” – a site’s authority on a particular topic along with large amounts of web content in that area of expertise. You publish or you perish. It’s as simple as that.
In other words, Google needs you to:
- Create relevant content;
- Offer a unique user experience.
Then you can begin climbing up the search engine results page.
How to Prove Yourself to a Robot!
So, to prove your authority to Google, you need a website that is constructed like a well thought out term paper or book, with in-depth content on a particular topic.
Let’s explore this example a bit:
Say your subject is archeology. There are many different archaeological methods and books on archeology, each would be explained in a separate chapter. This allows you to go more deeply into the methods used in each kind of dig.
Likewise, on your website, you have to demonstrate your expertise or authority in a way that makes sense to a robot.
The best way to do this is to place all your essential keyword phrases into an organizational chart. That’s the keyword map and it determines your site structure.
Your website’s hierarchy is the foundation for everything and it will improve your conversion rates.
Here are a few examples: Custom Label Company
Build a Website Optimization Company Culture
Just as each person in a company has a title and job responsibilities, the same thing is true for each page of your website. You need to assign a different keyword or phrase to every page, and give it a position in a hierarchical organization.
Below the top navigation, each page has its own title, keyword responsibility, and focus. Plus, the drop-down menu pages have their own keyword phrases as well.
If we wanted to describe website optimization in one sentence we would say it is the process of gathering focused keywords and applying them to your existing content to match your ideal clients needs.
Here are some client site mapping workshops.
