SEO Snack: Week of January 7th
Quick Week Summary
What I worked on this past week
This past week’s focus was a lot on getting started with onboarding of a few new clients we signed. A lot of this includes competitor analysis/research, industry research, research on the client, work on the backend of the website, and much more. A few other bigger pieces were researching the impact of rebranding has on a company for a client considering it and then optimizing some product pages.
Week Insights
What I struggled with
Optimizing Product Pages
One thing I’m still learning more about is how to best optimize product pages. It baffles me at times how “crappy” some product pages can be but how they continue to rank well for a lot of keywords.
What was a bigger headache than it needed to be
Analytics, Analytics, Analytics
Not that they were off but I’m struggling with finding a platform/software to bring in all the analytics we have for clients from different data sources into one place that doesn’t have a lot of bugs or manual input. If you have any recommendations, please shoot them my way!!
What went well this week
SEO Strategy
We’ve recently started to plan things out quarterly from a SEO perspective and the response we’ve had from clients has been great. Not only does it allow them to see/know everything we’ll be doing but it also keeps myself/the team organized throughout each month/quarter.
What to look out for or tune into
Google Update??
I’ve been more curious about what Google is doing with Google Search. If you’re in the SEO world, you’ve likely been up to date about the volatility since late December/early January so far. I’ve seen some interesting drops/increases that for a day or two that quickly go back to where they were previously. Potential for a Google Update soon/ongoing??
What weird things happened
Smooth Sailing (So Far)
Nothing too weird to start the year off (not complaining about that). If anything, it dovetails off of “What to look out for” with the volatility with Google Search.
Key Takeaways
1. Presentation Of Analytics
Showcasing analytics to clients in a simple but impactful way is extremely important. Especially when working with folks that don’t have an SEO background, it’s crucial to understand what they want to see and what they don’t. Even more important is being able to communicate those analytics effectively.
2. Is Your Site Healthy?
It may seem simple but just continually checking up on a website’s site health. This is pretty basic and expected but it’s easy to look passed it or let “small” issues pile up.
3. Documenting Everything (Or Most Things)
Combining both of those first two takeaways, the third is keeping record of those important analytics for clients. Again, that might seem elementary but I didn’t know how important site health was to a client until they looked at their current score and was very pleased about the strides we’ve made since the beginning of our partnership with them.
Resources To Look At
1. SEO News Resource
Looking for a good spot for SEO “news”? Give Search Engine Roundtable a look. It’s one of the few sources I used regularly to keep up with industry news and see what others are saying about any changes/interesting things going on.
2. Character Counter
A simple tool I use DAILY is Word Counter. Whether it’s meta titles/descriptions, blogs, new pages, etc., I’m pretty aware of the character length around all of these and this tool comes in pretty handy. Of course there are many tools like this out there but this is just my favorite.
3. On Marketing - Podcast
Shameless plug but I had the chance to hop on a marketing podcast in early 2023 and the episode just dropped. It’s with a great friend Jordan Ogren and we get to talk about all things SEO, websites and content, and life.
Family Plug: Dan Ciampa Artwork
This is 100% a plug for my pops. Since retirement recently, he’s gone head first back into painting (and if I do say myself, he’s pretty dang good at it).
He mainly creates landscape on canvas (which the one hanging in my apartment is pretty sick) but also does commission/contract work, so if you have a picture you want painted or anything else, give him a shout. Can’t go wrong with cheap, great, and maybe he’ll stop bugging me to buy them all.
