Obviously, your online business strategy doesn’t just end with search engine optimization (SEO). So the main question is on what happens after SEO? If you have everything in place in terms of SEO , what should you do next? This is a very common question that many webmasters ask. The answer is very simple. You just need to retain your visitors or to keep them coming back to your site. And how can this be done you ask? Here are some tips that can help you retain your visitors:

It’s all about Relevance
So what’s the initial and most important step in visitor retention? Correct! It’s relevance. Okay, listen to this. When correlating your heading, first paragraph and initial internal link anchor text instance with your meta-description, page title along the page naming convention from an initial query, always be mindful! The SERP should paint a very clear picture for the click through. Otherwise, you will only inflate your bounce rate. Quality is much more important than quantity. Think about it, is it better to have 10 visitors who do something or 100 visitors who don’t do anything?

Get Rid of those PDFs
Everyone knows that PDFs rank. However, HTMLs would rank better. Other than the SEO-ability of PDFs, you also have to consider user experience. Obviously, they will still be able to see your PDF content but they will likely appreciate HTMLs more. Also, there are usually no links in PDFs that allows users to examine your site further. This is obviously a dead end.

PDFs are great for the engineering world because of extensive diagrams, manuals, company brochures, etc. But for everything else, HTML should be the only option. However, you can also provide a PDF download link in case visitors want to print the information. If you really need to use PDFs, provide a link to your homepage in the footer of each page.

Social Integration
Another step is to connect your site traffic to your social communities. However, those icons linking to your social network profiles should open in a new window. It is a good idea to let your visitors visit your social profiles but you shouldn’t lead them off your website.

Partnerships
One of the best things you can do for your site is to create a link with a partner site. It would be a lot better if it is non-reciprocal. This is great especially for supporting and authoritative content that can help your visitors. Again, it should open in another window for obvious reasons.

As you know, when it comes to search algorithm changes, Google never conceal nor avoid people to see what’s really going on. In con nection to this fact, Google has recently talked about the up to date changes made in SERP particularly with the date-specified searches, titles and descriptions, etc.

For you that are already familiar with the Google’s Algorithm you can easily identify with the following changes made:

Changes Concerning the Page Content
There are some changes made that affects the page content which include snippets getting more pull on page content rather than header and menu content. You can also notice better page titles when you search for titles. This is done by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors. This change could also mean getting more relevant titles to its content every time you try to search for something on the web. Another change includes better detection of official pages whenever you search for a brand, business or even a topic. An image search signal has also been removed by Google as it has been detected to provide no significant impact at the present time.

Changes Concerning Freshest Searches
Google has also made changes to how they rank or detect the freshest or hottest content. This has made an impact to almost 35% of website content searches. This also means you can now depend on Google to give you the latest and freshest blogs, stories, etc. on the web while giving you the options to choose and to enter the specific timeline of search results you want to get. Like for instance, if you key in the word “Miss Universe”, you will be shown with the latest news, and buzz about the Miss Universe pageant.

In connection to this, people will easily get what they want if they choose to use the Google search engine tool. You’ll automatically see the freshest searches you can get from the web and you can also make your research advance by keying more information on what you are looking for.

Changes Concerning Language
One of the main changes made in Google Algorithm includes it cross-language information retrieval. From now on, Google will provide translation relevant to the English web titles. The translation will reflect below the English titles which you can see in the search results. If you click on the titles that are translated you’ll be brought to pages you desired which are already translated to your desire language.

Google has announced that they aim to be more transparent when it comes to their algorithm changes and improvements. Hence, Google has also specified their intentions on getting the public aware of the subsequent major changes that will be made on the Google algorithm.

This means a lot to people who have been used to using Google as their primary search engine. Being informed on the following changes can greatly help people especially those that are spending most of their time researching and studying the world through the web. Google must be true to their words by continually keeping the public informed of the next major Google Algorithm changes!

Controlling your brand’s message is one of the most important aspects of business that is crucial in achieving success. For online businesses, this can be done several ways including website optimization, using social media, releasing videos, etc. The main point is to ensure that your target audience hears what you want to say. The internet has revolved in recent years and one of the results is that controlling your brand’s message is now more important than ever particularly because of the popularity of social media.

Site Audit: How do You Use Social Media?
Before starting to optimize a site, the first action of a seasoned SEO practitioner is to perform a thorough technical dive with the intention of discovering the major and minor problems. Once these problems are established, it is time to make a plan on what actions need to be taken. Prioritization is also important in order to solve the bigger problems first and have faster results.

One of the most important parts of any site in terms of optimization is title tags. This is because it is one of the most important signals that search engines check when determining what a particular page is all about. Also, this gives visitors an idea what each page is about. Social media is the same and optimization it is often overlooked. This is obviously a big mistake especially because of the popularity of social media with hundreds of millions of users all over the world.

In one study conducted by ShareThis, they came up with the conclusion that Facebook makes up about 37% of traffic from shares with the use of the social share button. So, the question is if you’re fully taking advantage of this opportunity. In some cases, some organizations are still in the dark having no Social Media strategy at all.

Where to Begin
If you want to begin as soon as possible, you need to initially focus on two social optimization tactics:

1. Social Sharing – you need to have your Social assets in place and continuously improve on these assets. You should also leverage these assets on your site. This will not only enable you to become an authority through the point of view of search engines but it also allows users to share your content easily. It is very simple, the more shares you have, the higher your authority and visibility in SERP.

2. Social Graph and Social Sharing – this automatically points to the Open Graph because of its close connection to adding social share buttons. These two should come together since not having Open Graph tags hinders sharing.

In every business, there is a competitor whether it is a direct or indirect one. If you are still new to e-commerce, you’d have to be prepared to work hard and get some of the market share. Obviously, the leading websites will be the ones who have been around for quite a while; these websites have the most market share online. While you may not have the assets to directly compete with them immediately, there is one way for you to get ahead. You simply have to be patient and wait for your competitor to create mistakes. When this happens, it is time to take advantage of it as your SEO strategy.

There are many online websites that are smart enough to use their competitor’s mistakes to their advantage. Here are some examples on how to exercise this strategy:

The HackGate Scandal

The most recent example of this SEO strategy is the HackGate Scandal. It was a story about a phone hacking scandal that involves The News of the World and former editor Rebekah Brooks. During this time, Huffington Post UK was getting ready for its launch. Large marketing efforts were employed to make sure that traffic was lead to the Huffington post UK’s website.

The Sun, which is the biggest newspaper in Britain, wrote a small article about this scandal. However, the article didn’t talk about the specific details and issues. Because of this, internet users were looking for more information about the scandal. With Huffington Post UK’s launch and a well-written article about the HackGate Scandal, visitors were reading about it in Huffington Post UK.

The Sun realized the mistake they made and tried to fix it by posting several articles online and offline but the damage has been done. The UK public is already reading about the scandal elsewhere. And now, Huffington Post UK is benefitting from the mistake their top competition has made.

FanHouse

FanHouse is an AOL site that has been using this SEO strategy for a while. The first one was the scandal between Brooke Hundley and ESPN anchor Steve Phillips. FanHouse was quick to make a story about the affair and the article included details and several images. ESPN didn’t make any move as they had to protect their anchor as well. Because of this, FanHouse jumped into top ranks in SERP when internet users were looking for this scandal.

Another example that made FanHouse outrank ESPN again was back in February 2010. This incident was about anchor Tony Kornheiser attacking the fashion sense of Hannah Storm. Again, FanHouse was quick to make a story about this. It took ESPN 5 days to make a statement. This helped FanHouse double their visitor traffic.

ParcPlace-Digitalk Suicide Note

Back in 1995, Smalltalk made the decision to focus on their new Java offering. An email was sent to their customers informing them that the merging of the two Smalltalk versions will no longer happen. In the letter, no transition process was noted and this created confusion among Smalltalk users. The letter was known to be the “ParcPlace-Digitalk Suicide Note”.

IBM saw this mistake and took advantage of the situation. They sent out a note to all PPD customers, giving them information on how to transition from the Smalltalk PPD version to the small IBM version then to the new Java version. Customers were quick in transitioning to IBM and after two years, PPD sold off because it has lost a majority of its customers.

These are good examples of how your major competitor might mess up in the future. You better be ready when this happens so you can use their mistakes in your SEO strategy. Then again, they will be watching your every move too so make sure you have a reputation management plan under your sleeves.