Website owners frequently focus on short-term search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.  Perhaps in response to changes to search engine changes to ranking algorithms. Perhaps so they can jump start their money-earning online marketing efforts. Whatever the reason, putting all of your energy in short-term SEO is shortsighted. Long-term SEO must be considered if you want to maximize your site’s performance and, ultimately, your bottom line.

The reality is that much of what you do related to SEO will be in place for the long-term with updates and adjustments made in response to changes in customer needs and search engine processes.  What needs to change is the way you think about SEO.  SEO generally takes time to be fruitful – you are unlikely to experience many overnight SEO successes. Rather, each SEO technique you use can leverage others before and after it.  In many respects, this is long-term SEO in action.

Specific steps you take can improve your long-term SEO outcomes.  When you focus on your future needs, you are really preparing your website for changes before they occur.   The idea is that instead of constantly making changes to your website in response to search engine algorithm updates, you create a solid website with high quality content that your customers want so you are already ahead of competitors when it comes to SEO.  Following are additional long-term SEO principles to consider.

1.     Adhering to search engine guidelines provides the foundation of SEO.

Guidelines are the building blocks of strong SEO. If you are like many people, you probably see these guidelines as rules that govern how to successfully submit your website to a particular search engine. Once you have done that, you honestly don’t give them another thought. But these guidelines are so much more than submission directions. Using them will insure your site has every opportunity to achieve a high Page Rank and be included on relevant search engine results pages (SERPs).  Even if you do nothing beyond this step, you have accomplished more than the majority of sites online.  Search engines are in the business of providing the best search results to their customers.  And the guidelines are their instruction manuals to site owners that detail how to create websites that allow the search engines to gather pertinent information for those search results.  Search engines want you to be successful so they provide you with clear recommendations on how to achieve high rankings on their SERPs.

2.     A site that is useful and functional already has SEO advantages.

In part, this requires you to create content before you need it.  Futuring is a concept and process that should be applied to website usability and SEO.  Forecasting what your customers might find useful six-months, one year, and even two years from now will help you decide how to position your site to attract the most visitors.  By planning for the future, you can design your site in a way that allows for every possible contingency so your site remains optimized regardless of how it grows.  You should be able to completely change your keyword sets with no problems. Have you thought beyond the here and now?  What will your site look like in a year or two?  How will your customers use your content?

3.     Site content that meets popular demand has a high percentage of built-in SEO.

Build a foundation of good content, and they will come.  More, importantly they will stay.  This is SEO 101 – the more popular your site, the higher your Page Rank.  The higher your ranking, the more traffic you will get to your site.  Relevant content is the primary factor that search engines use when ranking your site.  Search engines are all about information and high quality content.  The more of this you provide, the more naturally optimized your site will be.  Fresh content is needed by both customers and search engines. This means no duplicate content; instead, provide new and engaging information on a regular basis. There are many ways to do this from replacing current content to adding additional information on your site.  You will need to review search trends to see what the most commonly searched terms are in your particular niche to make sure you are adequately addressing customer needs.

4.     Pleasing customers without regard for search engines increases SEO potential.

What if you actually ignored the search engine algorithms and focused solely on your customers?  What would happen?  If you have already been using SEO best practices, even the Google Panda update probably didn’t impact your site rankings too much.  Most big drops in rankings resulted from major violations of Google Webmaster Guidelines, with a large percentage due to poor content.  Again, basic SEO principles, when implemented, can help your site perform well without further consideration of search engine algorithm updates.  This speaks to creating your site for customers, not search engines.  The more intrinsic value you provide to customers, the better off your site is from an SEO perspective. Websites that have not been updated in over a year are fairly useless to customers who seek fresh content and new opportunities when they visit websites.  Providing this is your ticket to SEO success.

5.     Gradually building links over time has greater SEO benefit than quick link building strategies.

Organic links that occur naturally as a result of relationships or mutual connections have more SEO value than paid link building schemes.  Most search engines have reinforced the notion that the quality of links is more important than the quantity.  And quality takes time.  As we have seen with Google Panda, sites that have too many unrelated links can be obliterated from SERPs. In addition to drops in Page Rank, some of these sites actually received Google penalties for using links solely for SEO purposes. Even reciprocal links are frowned upon where they had once been the main link building tactic for websites.

6.     Sites that work too hard at being optimized risk SEO outcomes.

Yes, it is possible to be over-optimized.  When you use keywords in ways that are not natural to the flow of your content, you are over-optimizing.  Submitting your website to every search engine for inclusion is another over-optimization technique. Incorporating every old and new SEO tactic is simply not necessary and can actually be counter-productive to your SEO strategy.  Search engines can decide to de-index your site because it appears you are focusing more on them rather than your customers.

7.     Off-page activity that provides quality content to customers and builds your reputation improves SEO.

From blogs to press releases and article submissions, these off-page activities can improve SEO as long as you again focus on your customers.  Of course, you will optimize your text with keywords and meta tags as needed.  But your attention should be on providing high quality information that your customers want to read.  You do this and your online reputation will continue to grow which further affects your Page Rank.  These are natural SEO-building activities that require no additional tactics to get your content included on SERPs. Mass submissions of articles and press releases only work if the content is unique.  A better approach is to develop a schedule of the number of blog entries as well as article and Press Release submissions you want to complete each month. Be realistic and think about your customers when establishing the schedule.

8.     Improving your customer experience equates to better SEO.

Each time a search engine makes a change to its algorithm, it is doing so for the sole purpose of improving search results for their customers.  The top priority for search engines is providing the best customer experience via search results as well as connections to websites that also cater to customer experience.  So, if you are providing one-half of that equation, and you are doing it well, rest assured your SEO will produce high rankings for your site. Develop creative ways to obtain customer feedback so you can routinely measure customer satisfaction and experience on your site. Use this information to make improvements where needed.

9.     Playing by the rules will reap SEO rewards.

Avoid using black hat tactics which are designed to trick search engines into giving your site a higher rank than it deserves.  Examples include keyword stuffing, doorway pages, and hidden links.  Any type of unethical approach to SEO will eventually catch up with you as search engine algorithms become more sophisticated and are better equipped to identify sites that employ these tactics.  As we have seen with Google Panda, even the appearance of black hat SEO can result in your site being penalized and receiving a substantial drop in Page Rank.

When you consider the fact that in 2011, it is estimated Google will make around 500 changes to its algorithm, it is near impossible for any online business to keep up with all of those changes.  Implementing long-term SEO allows you to continue your business in the face of these changes without worrying that your site might disappear from SERPs.  In short, long-term SEO is an investment in your customers and your website’s success.

If your search engine optimization (SEO) and other online marketing strategies are working and you have an increase in traffic to your site, but you are not getting the conversions you expected, look no further than your landing page. After SEO, landing pages are the essential element for high conversion rates.  Myriad reasons exist that inhibit visitors from becoming customers.  Assuming your products or services as well as your prices are competitive, that pretty much leaves your landing page as the culprit.

Regardless of what you have been told or read, an increase in clickthroughs is not a guarantee of a higher conversion rate.  Once visitors reach your site, a conversion will occur only if they are (a) interested in what you are selling and (b) you make it easy for them to do just that.  So, at this point in the SEO process, all of the responsibility is on your shoulders.  Following are typical reasons your landing pages may not be converting for you.

1.     Visitors are Confused

This occurs when they get to your site and there is no obvious relation to what they expected to see.  If this is intentional, then you need to seriously rethink your SEO strategy.  These underhanded approaches may get you visitors but it is no wonder they are not converting.  You may not even be aware this has occurred if you rely entirely on an SEO Firm who may be employing black hat SEO techniques. It is recommended you fix this as soon as possible so that your site is not de-indexed by search engines who do not like these misleading approaches.  If your landing pages are simply mixed up, this is an easy fix but it may take a bit of time for changes to be reflected correctly on search engines until they have re-indexed your site. However, sites with significant corrections can be resubmitted to search engines to speed up the indexing process.

2.     Headline is Not Engaging

You have seconds to grab and hold a visitor’s attention.  Their eyes will be drawn to the most prominent text on the page which will be your heading.  This is your chance to engage them in what your website has to offer them.  Tease them but not so much they aren’t sure what to expect in terms of content. Visitors don’t like to be surprised when they visit websites.  But they are willing to be enticed as long as you sufficiently appease their curiosity.

3.     Lack of Relevant Content

Beyond the headline is your actual content.  It should be relevant to what they are looking for based on their keyword search.  Avoid duplicate content – this goes for your own site as well as content on other sites.  Nothing is more frustrating to visitors than seeing the same information over and over.  Provide fresh content on a regular basis so that it stays relevant for your return visitors as well as new ones.

4.     Insufficiently Optimized Content

Are you using your keywords in your subheadings and as anchor text links?  Can your visitors quickly scan your landing page to see the content is probably relevant before they even begin reading? This is where optimized content is helpful.  When writing your content, keep both your customers and the search engines in mind so that you are providing the type of information that customers are looking for and that search engines determine is valuable.

5.     Content is Too Technical

Your content should be readable to just about any average visitor.  Content that is difficult to comprehend can cost you customers.  You don’t want visitors to become frustrated when they read your landing page content.  Even if your business is naturally technical, you can tone down some of the language and use layman’s terms more frequently.

6.     Keywords are Wrong

Broad keywords may be sending visitors to your site who are looking for something more specific.  Review your keywords to insure you are attracting targeted traffic for your site.  You want to look at long-tail keywords as well as negative keywords.  There are free Keyword Research and analyzer tools you can use to see if there are better keywords for your site.  Review of your keywords should be done on a regular basis since customer needs are constantly changing.

7.     Error-Riddled Content

If you are not a good writer, have someone who is double check your content.  Landing pages with obvious spelling and grammatical errors can dissuade visitors from making purchases.  They assume if you are sloppy with your website content, they can have no expectation you will provide good service or quality products.

8.     Unprofessional Presentation

From your layout to your color scheme, all site design elements should come together for a professional presentation of your business.  Use appropriate photos to enhance your image. Incorporate your business logo where appropriate.  A text-only site is too elementary for most customers to view your site as reliable.  You are in complete control of your site presentation so make sure that what your customer’s perception is matches what you put forward.

9.     Page is Difficult to Navigate

Poorly designed landing pages will cause your visitors to leave.  How your customers are expected to work their way through your site should be intuitive.  Don’t make them work for it or they will walk away.  Spread out your content even if this means having multiple landing pages.

10.    No Call to Action

Now that you have their attention, what do you want them to do?  Be brief but be clear.  Even if you just want them to read your landing page, ask them to “like” you on Facebook or something similar.  Do you want them to make a purchase?  Tell them exactly that.  A landing page with no call to action provides no incentive for your visitors to further explore your site or to return at a later date.

11.     Critical Information is Below the Fold

Remember you have only seconds to keep visitors attention.  If what they are looking for is not obvious, you can expect them to leave.  All important information should be kept above the fold so that visitors don’t have to scroll down the page to find what they seek.  Test your landing page on multiple browsers to make sure what you want visitors to immediately see above the fold appears as such regardless of browser used.

12.     Contact Form is Not Customer-Friendly

Customers should be able to get in touch with you easily and quickly.  If your landing page has a contact form for them to complete, keep it short, keep it simple.  You do not need a detailed customer profile to answer a few questions.  The longer the form, the more likely they will leave and check out your competitors.  Even with a short form, you can request specific information you need to prepare a follow-up conversation with the customer.

13.     Poor Customer Service

Along that same line, make sure you actually follow-up.  Don’t leave customers handing.  Give them a sense of how long they should wait for you to respond to their contact form or other way of submitting questions to you.  It’s okay if you require a 24 hour time frame, just let them know.  In fact, it is a good idea to inform them of your routine turn-around time before they submit the contact form.  You can include that above the form so they are likely to read it prior to completing the request for information.

14.     Too Much Advertising

If your customers see more ads than content, they may just leave.  It is alright to have advertising on your landing page, but there should definitely be more content on that page than ads.  Don’t surround your content with ads either.  Keep ads on the sides of the content or on the top and bottom, not all the way around because it is too distracting especially if you have animated ads.  Remember, visitors came to your site for content, not to see your ads.  In fact, savvy Internet users have learned to distrust sites that are predominately ads.  Don’t be surprised if one of your visitors submits your site to the search engines as a spam site.  Consider moving the majority of your ads to another web page you are not using as a landing page.

15.     Slow Loading Time

Don’t expect your visitors to be patient.  Anything that slows your landing page load time should be immediately removed.  This could be graphics or an imbedded video.  Whatever is causing the slowdown will certainly impact your conversion rates.  Visitors just will not hang around waiting for a page to load, no matter what is on it!

16.     Failure to Test Prior to Launch

Landing pages should be tested before you launch your full SEO strategy.  Test several versions to see which have the higher approval or conversion rates with customers.  There may only be slight differences on the pages, but it is those differences that can determine your conversion success rate.

Routinely conduct a landing page audit to make sure visitors are getting to the right landing page for a specific ad or keyword and that the content they see is correct.  Once you have frustrated a prospective customer, you may never get another opportunity to win them back.  Be proactive so you don’t lose a customer over a mistake on your part that is easily corrected.

Haven’t jumped on the Google Plus bandwagon?  Waiting to see if it fizzles?  Or just not sure it’s worth your time? The reality is that you can, in fact, improve your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy with Google Plus.  The primary reason for this is that Google indexes Google Plus profiles and posts to be included on search engine results pages (SERPs).  This is significant because, presently, Google is not indexing Twitter or Facebook posts. And with other 100 million users, this makes Google Plus a significant advantage for businesses interested in Google search marketing efforts.

When you now enter a keyword into the Google search bar, you get the regular listing you are familiar with but you also get “People and Pages on Google+” included at the top of the right sidebar.  These represent the top Google Plus profiles and pages that relate to your search. You see this information whether or not you have a Google Plus profile yourself.  But when you click “see more” you are redirected to Google+ where even more profiles are listed.  You can then click on the one that interests you for more information.

If you have a Google Plus account, you get access to “Search, plus Your World”. This is the regular search engine information plus your Google Plus content. But it takes more than simply having a Google Plus account if you expect to improve your SEO efforts.  You can establish yourself as an authority through this particular social platform.  This is particularly useful since Google Plus now offers Google pages specifically for businesses. The following are steps you can take to incorporate Google Plus into your SEO approach.

1.     Establish Google Plus Profile

Begin by completing a personal or business profile.  Be sure to optimize your profile content by using keywords in each section.  Keywords should be included in a natural way so that your profile reads smoothly.  Write for both your customers and Google search engine. Remember that part of your profile will be included on “People and Pages on Google+” so carefully plan what you want viewers to initially see about you and your business. Write content that is meaningful and is error-free.

2.     Create Your Brand Page

After setting up your account and profile, you are ready to create your primary business page.  Called your brand page, you begin by selecting the category of your business. Then you will add your business name and website address. Include your company logo and tagline – in ten words or less. Remember to optimize all aspects of your page, from the content to images.  In addition to fresh content, you can include videos and photographs. Carefully select your page name since it appears that your business page name is a factor in its search engine ranking.  Once your page is finalized, you are ready to begin inviting folks to join your circle.

3.     Build Your Circles

Circles are comparable to the “friends” lists you build on Facebook.  You even create them in a similar fashion by starting with your current contact list which includes family, friends, coworkers, and business associates.  Then work your way outward to include new contacts, particularly individuals and businesses that are relevant to your specific niche area.  You want to be included in as many circles as feasible.  The goal here is to get reciprocal “adds” – you join their circle and they join yours.  You have a better chance of making this happen if you offer high quality content that is of interest to people.

4.     Include Google +1 Buttons on Your Site

Similar to “likes” on Facebook, visitors can give you a +1 for each post they like.  The more plus 1’s you have, the more relevant your content is deemed which can improve your Google ranking.  Add the Google +1 button to your website alongside other social media buttons.  If one of your web pages appears on a search engine results page (SERP), the number of plus 1’s that page has will be included with your listing.  The greater number of plus 1’s tells search engine users that you have content that other readers have found valuable.

5.     Add Posts Regularly

The more active you are on Google Plus, the greater the chances of your posts being included in Google search results.  It is recommended you add at least every other day so that you can widen your circles.  More people will join your circles as they read your posts.  Remember that you can include links in your posts so think about ways to present relevant content to your readers.  Fresh content also insures your profile is included in Google search results.  Profiles with content that is more than three days old may not be included on SERPs.

6.     Optimize Posts and Pages

This is no different than optimizing any of your other content.  It requires you to use keywords in original content.  All content should be relevant to your business.  And it should be informative for readers. This means you can include social media like YouTube videos in your posts. You can provide links directly to your website.  Since the goal is to get many plus 1’s, you want people to comment on your post so your content needs to be sufficiently engaging that readers will respond to it.  Pages are often more important than posts in search results so pay particular attention to your brand pages.

7.     Improve Your Author Rank

Using your personal profile, you can enable authorship which is crucial to building your Author Rank with Google.  As your content becomes popular and you establish yourself as a trustworthy author, Google will increase your Author Rank score which will also increase your SERP rankings.  You can manage this through the Contributor settings located in your profile.  You want links added to all the sites you write for so you get appropriate authorship credit.

8.     Hangout for More Visibility

With Google Plus Hangouts, which are like Skype’s video chats, can be used to increase your visibility with customers and Google.  Because Hangouts are limited to ten people, you can widen your audience by using Hangouts on Air, a tool that makes your Hangout visible to everyone on Google Plus.  Videos are great ways to promote your business by providing information that viewers are interested in obtaining.

9.     Reconnect on a Personal Level

One of the great things that Google Plus does is truly focus on the social aspects of business relationships.  The old adage “it’s who you know” has been revived.  Like LinkedIn, individuals within businesses network with colleagues and bring those resources to the company they currently work for.  But with Google Plus, you can actually search for personal results including photos or posts that your circle has shared with you.  So, obvious the same holds true for the content your share with others on Google Plus. Since only they can see their personal results, this is an opportunity to optimize content on a personal level.

10.     Actively Promote Your Business Page

You are now ready to begin promoting your brand page.  You can include the Google Plus button or badge in all of your electronic communications.  Add it to your email signature.  Join discussions and otherwise engage your targeted audience. For SEO purposes, you need to do more than publish content – you must stay active on Google Plus.

11.     Measure Results

Google offers several measuring tools you can use to monitor your Google Plus performance.  You can monitor your brand reputation by seeing what people are saying about you. Are your SEO strategies working? How can you tell? Well, one particularly cool feature is the Ripple which allows you to actually see how your content is being used across Google Plus.  You can see who is actually sharing your content. Those with a lot of plus 1’s can have significant influence over their circles so you want to make sure they are part of your circle and vice versa.  Google is developing additional tools that will help you gather detailed information on your circles.

One of the primary benefits of Google Plus is that Google Plus posts can actually appear in SERPs even if your website is struggling to be ranked higher.  This can give you a major advantage over competitors.  It is also a quick way for new online businesses to get included on SERPs while waiting for search engines to index their websites for inclusion on SERPs.

That being said, you may not see overnight results. Google Plus is a new platform so it will take time for your business page and posts to have the amount of readers you want.  Fortunately, this gives your customers plenty of time to catch up with your Google Plus marketing approach.  It is likely that once they realize they have a new search portal available to them, they too, will join Google Plus.

Google Plus is still fairly new in the social network environment so things are changing quickly as Google adds new features and generally makes Google Plus more competitive with other social media sites. And individuals and businesses that have been using the platform the longest have distinct advantages over newbies – larger circles, quicker to adapt to changes, and a greater authorship presence.