Insights From
The Stages of Child Development
I have two young
children, so I'm reminded daily of the different stages of child development.
In case you need a refresher, here are a few important points:
1. Children develop physically and
emotionally in clearly defined stages.
2. Each stage builds on the skills learned
in the previous stage (e.g., tummy time leads to crawling, which leads
to walking)
3. Parental guidance needs to match the
stage of development (e.g., parents shouldn't try to reason with a
toddler that hasn't developed the capacity to reason yet)
OK, with that fresh in
your mind, let's refocus our attention to SEO...
How SEO Stages
Are Similar to Child Development Stages
Just like child
development, SEO also develops in clearly defined stages that I'll walk
through in a moment. Plus, each stage builds on itself so it's
important to know where you are at any given point in time. If you try
to skip ahead without completing previous stages, then you'll likely
run into a host of problems.
Finally, by knowing
which stage you're in, you'll know what you need to do to push your SEO
forward. Think of it like parenting. You wouldn't parent a 5-year-old
the same way you would a 2-year-old. Those children are in completely
different stages so they require different parental skills to be
effective. The same is true when it comes to your SEO!
Introducing The
3 Stages of SEO
Right now your business
is in one of the following 3 stages of SEO, and as we discussed above,
the stage will determine where you need to focus. The 3 stages are:
1. Tune-Up stage
2. Build-Up stage
3. Expand-Out stage
Let's walk through each
stage in more detail...
The Tune-Up
Stage
If you're just getting
started with SEO, then you're in the Tune-Up stage. This is where we
all start so it's like the infant stage of SEO.
The primary goal of the
Tune-Up stage is to improve what you already have on your website. For
example, if you have 10 pages on your website, then you'll focus on
improving those 10 pages first before moving on to the next stage.
You'll notice there is
no discussion of links, content marketing, blogging, or social media in
the Tune-Up stage. The focus here is on your existing webpages because
that's the foundation of your SEO.
The purpose of this
article to give you an overview of the SEO stages so I'm not going to
dive into the nitty-gritty details of on-page SEO edits. Just know that
on-page SEO is where you should focus and also make edits to improve
your website conversion rates.
Once you're done with
the Tune-Up stage, then it's time to move on to stage #2...
The Build-Up Stage
For many businesses,
the Tune-Up stage will not get you very far with SEO. Again, you can
think of it like the infant stage. When you move past infancy, then you
haven't really made it too far along with child development. :)
That's why the Build-Up
stage is critical. The goal of the Build Up stage is to create
additional webpages and online business profiles to improve your
chances of ranking in Google. In other words, you're going to
"build up" your SEO web presence.
One of the best ways to
do this is to create a Resource Center on your website that includes
articles relevant to your target keyword phrases. Plus, you'll need to
set up your profiles in all the major business directories with
accurate and consistent information. These profiles act as citations,
which boost your rankings for locally-focused keyword searches.
OK, at this point your
website is set up properly to rank in Google, but that doesn't mean
you'll actually show up on the first page of Google. You need to move
on to the next stage to continue to climb up the rankings...
The Expand-Out
Stage
The goal of the
Expand-Out stage is to increase your exposure and your website domain
authority. If you're not familiar, you can think of domain authority
like a child's maturity level. As a child progresses along the
developmental stages, she matures physically and emotionally. The same
thing happens with your website.
The higher the domain
authority or the more "mature" your website is, the higher
you'll rank in Google. One of the biggest factors in your domain
authority is the quantity and quality of links from other websites.
That's why the primary focus in this stage is to attract links.
How do you attract
links? In short, you use content marketing. For example, blogging on
your own website, contributing articles on other websites, and engaging
your audience on social media are a few of the tactics you'll want to
focus on during the Expand Out stage. Those tactics will increase your
exposure so your business gets in front of more prospects, while at the
same time attract more links to increase your domain authority.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment