Changes in SEO strategies – the natural sequence of things

When you think about an SEO strategy, first of all, you have to accept the fact that it is impossible to create a long-term action plan that will work without corrections. Google’s environment is very volatile – new updates of the search engine algorithm are constantly coming out, which often significantly change the rules of the game. Additionally, what worked on 100 similar pages may not necessarily work on page 101 as well. Therefore, changes in the strategy of activities are completely natural and even advisable if the chosen path does not bring results. Positioning is about constantly monitoring the effects, modifying, correcting and re-measuring the results. A properly selected strategy is therefore flexible and may change over time if changes in the algorithm or simply the specificity of a given website require it.

Clearly set priorities are essential

Most websites require many changes in various fields at the beginning of positioning – some of the corrections are purely technical, others require modifying and expanding the content or taking care of external linking. Such modifications cannot be made entirely in a week, month or even six months. Hence, SEO strategies should prioritize tasks to be performed, identifying those that are most urgent and those that can be introduced next.

The best strategies are divided into stages, thanks to which the client knows what to expect from a positioning agency. Not all changes are visible to the naked eye to someone who is not a specialist in a given topic. On the surface, it may seem that the positioner is doing nothing, while he is doing a lot of work necessary to improve the visibility of the website. Such changes take time, especially if the website is extensive, has many tabs, and has been modified frequently.

White hat SEO only!

Properly constructed SEO strategies focus only on good positioning practices, without assuming any prohibited actions or those resulting from the so-called the gray area. Attempts to take shortcuts and trick Google’s algorithm may result in the filter being imposed – either automatically or manually by an employee – and this causes the page to stop showing up in search results. Of course, you can try to remove the filter, but even if it is successful, the page drops in the search results, and restoring its good opinion in the assessment of the algorithm is extremely difficult.

What activities do you need to watch out for? For example, Google does not recognize the automatic mass generation of links to a page on unrelated websites, forums or blogs. Attempts to deceive search engine robots by presenting them with a version of the page other than users, or trying to “hide” texts on the page (eg creating white text on a white background) are badly seen. These types of naming activities are Black Hat SEO and should be avoided entirely.

SEO strategy – the role of cooperation

All changes introduced by the positioner must be accepted by the client, and the sooner the acceptance takes place, the earlier the website begins to achieve results. In addition, there are also such activities that the client must carry out on his own according to the recommendations of the positioning company. For example, the loading speed is very important for the visibility of the website, while some customers use slow and emergency hosting, which limits SEO possibilities. Then it is on the customer’s side to change the service provider, because without it, other activities become much less effective.

Sometimes the system on which the website was created is also a problem. If the client uses a proprietary solution or a less popular CMS, it may turn out that it lacks the functionalities necessary to improve the visibility of the website. In such cases, it is necessary to transfer the website to another system, which the client also has to do with his own resources. At this point, however, it is worth mentioning that such action must take place in cooperation with an SEO specialist who prepares recommendations on how to carry out the change so as not to lose the power of the website.

Cooperation must be based on trust

A mistake of many clients is blocking some of the changes recommended by the positioner. Most often it concerns interference with the content on the website, adding new content or changes in structural data. Lack of consent to some activities does not completely eliminate efforts to increase the visibility of the website, but it does not allow the website to use its full potential and achieve optimal results. Therefore, when deciding on services in the field of positioning, it is worth choosing a proven agency that you can trust. Then the client can be sure that all changes recommended by the positioner are necessary and work to the benefit of the website. Agreeing only some of the actions listed in the SEO strategy generally does not bring any satisfaction or measurable benefits to any of the parties.

However, it is important not only that the client can trust the SEO specialist, but also that the positioner can trust his client. SEO strategies cannot be fully implemented if the client makes changes to the website on his own without informing the SEO company about it. Such actions can destroy months of SEO work and cause an immediate drop in the visibility of your website. What activities are we talking about? Most often it concerns changing the CMS without prior information, changing the URLs of subpages, deleting subpages or deleting content on the website.

Linking strategy – an integral part of your SEO strategy

A very important part of the SEO strategy is the so-called off-site SEO, i.e. acquiring external links to the website. These types of links can be obtained from various sources, including online forums, product catalogs, back-end sites or through platforms selling sponsored articles. Less common methods of getting links are also possible, such as exchanging guest posts with bloggers or linking to a page on social media. However, it is important to remember that only good quality links give the website power – from thematically related websites, highly rated by algorithms. Therefore, the selection of linking sources is one of the most important elements of an SEO strategy. It is also important to schedule the publication of links – too many links that appear at the same time can alert the algorithm that starts suspecting us of unfair practices.

The strategy of building a link profile must be closely tailored to the industry, and even the specificity of the positioned page. It should also be preceded by an in-depth analysis of the competition’s link profile – on the basis of such information, we can decide what can be done better and how to expand the collection of links to gain a competitive advantage thanks to them.

What does an SEO strategy consist of?

The SEO strategy should include all the activities that will be carried out to position a given website on Google – both on the website itself and outside it (external linking). Its main elements are:
– a list of keywordsfor which the website will be positioned – it should contain all the keywords whose positions will be monitored by the positioner. Such a list is prepared by the agency in cooperation with the client, who can determine which areas of activity are the most important for him and which subpages, product categories or the products themselves are crucial for him from a business point of view.
– website architecture optimization plan – this means building a category tree, layout of website navigation, organizing tags, etc.,
– technical optimization plan for the website – that is, all those activities that are to increase the loading speed of the website, improve its responsiveness and user-friendliness. The purely technical changes include such activities as: code minification, graphics compression, implementation of browser caching, entering structured data, creating sitemap.xml, setting redirects, implementing canonical tags and many others,
– content development strategy on the website – at the planning stage, it is necessary to determine which page tabs should be enriched with new content, whether it is worth introducing space for additional content (e.g. blog or news), at what stages of work individual content will be added, etc.
– the concept of building a profile of external links – this means selecting sites for linking, determining how many links should be obtained and when to publish them,
– a plan for building a network of internal links – that is, creating links on the website to other subpages of the positioned website. A well-developed internal linking strategy makes it easier for the user to navigate the site and find the information they need.

In this post, we present all the features and tools that are available on Hubspot. So if your company is considering implementing automation to its marketing activities – read on.

HubSpot – what is it?

HubSpot is a system for automating the activities of sales and customer service departments with marketing activities, thanks to which your company can closely monitor the impact of one on another and optimize specific processes.

In addition to these possibilities, HubSpot is primarily a huge database of contacts and companies. Anyone who interacts with your business can be saved as a contact on HubSpot. Examples of contacts are visitors who converted on the form, visitors who contact your team, or potential customers your team met at events. A good database of contacts will allow your team to easily record and retrieve information about them, keeping everyone up-to-date.

What modules does Hubspot consist of?

The system consists of 4 main modules:
– marketing – helping to increase traffic, the number of conversions resulting from a larger number of visitors and effectively lead and monitor the effects of marketing campaigns,
– sales – helps to automate sales tasks (sending e-mails to potential customers, call register),
– service – thanks to which you will introduce order and improve customer service processes (notes, detailed data, reports),
– CMS – used to manage content, create newsletters and landing pages.

Each of the modules is a separate tool and can be used separately, however, for comprehensive sales and marketing support, it is worth using the potential of all of them. And about the potential in them below.

Marketing Hub in Hubspot

The marketing module allows you to manage all marketing processes in your company: automate activities related to publishing content, combine various advertising channels and analyze their effectiveness. What features will you find in the marketing module and what are the benefits?

– Option to post the content your audience is looking for to make them easier to find in search engines, social media and more. And by adding call to action buttons, encourage them to convert.
– Positioning the website thanks to SEO tools that help you plan your strategy and optimize your content as you write it.
– Manage your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google ads directly in the HubSpot system. The ability to track which ads turn leads into customers.
– Planning social media publications, managing, analyzing and monitoring posts and prioritizing them to increase the chance of reaching customers.
– Function to insert and manage files directly in HubSpot and easily embed them on social media, websites and blog posts.
– Live chat function, thanks to which you can chat with your website visitors in real time. Use bots to qualify leads and scale your efforts to focus on the conversations that matter most.
– Option to design and launch a landing page without the help of programmers or IT specialists. Access an extensive library of mobile optimized templates that convert, or build pages from scratch.
– Create forms with a simple drag and drop editor. Add them to your website to turn anonymous visitors into leads that will automatically be added to your contact database.
– Automate repetitive company processes, plan large-scale mailing campaigns, streamline cross-functional operations, bulk data management, and more.
– Create mobile-optimized email campaigns that look professional. Ability to personalize content for each audience and run A / B testing to improve click-through rates.
– A complete picture of each potential customer in one integrated database. Thanks to the segmentation of contacts based on the collected data and automation, you can evaluate the potential of leads and assign them to a specific person from your sales team.
– Advanced, custom reports and built-in analytics.
– Flexibility to store and customize any type of data in HubSpot. Ability to prepare reports With custom data and create dashboards to share insights with your team.

Sales Hub in Hubspot

The sales module combines all tools and data on one easy-to-use, efficient platform. Thanks to it, you gain constant control over acquiring leads and converting them into customers by sales departments. What exactly does it have?

– Ability to create email templates from the most effective emails that can be shared with your team.
– Monitoring the time a prospect opens emails, so you can respond to them in a timely manner and close the deal faster.
– Library of useful sales materials for the entire team, the ability to share documents directly from the inbox.
– Making and recording calls directly from the browser and automatic registration of them in the CRM system, thanks to which you will discover what is behind the team’s results.
– Share a link that allows potential customers to choose an appointment that suits everyone – it will be automatically synced with your calendar.
– Set up a series of personalized emails and follow-up tasks to keep the entire sales process in mind.
– Ability to contact potential customers when they are actively using your website. Direct your chat conversations to the right team members to build better relationships and close more deals.
– Knowledge base full of the right tools, chat scripts, marketing guides, and more.
– Full insight into the sales process to be able to effectively forecast and achieve even better results.
– Mobile application to manage your contacts, offers and tasks from any place and device.
– One-click contract adding, task assignments and progress tracking on your dashboards.
– and more!

Service Hub in Hubspot

Today, customers expect a problem to be resolved within minutes and personalized service 24/7 through a variety of channels. However, most customer service teams struggle to meet these growing demands because their tools and data reside in multiple sources or tools.

The service module collects all customer service data and channels in one place and helps you scale support through automation and self-service. What do you gain from this? More time for proactive service that retains and expands your customer base. Here are the features that can make it easier for you:

– Ability to add routing and automation to tickets, so the help desk will prioritize critical issues.
– Possibility to transform the FAQ database – frequently asked questions into a library of articles, videos and documentation that will help to solve them.
– Combine team email, live chat, Facebook Messenger, and more into one universal inbox so your entire team can see conversations and respond in one place.
– Ensure that each user has access to the appropriate resources. Ability to quickly view and manage permissions, statuses and availability across the team.
– Create custom surveys to collect customer and contractor feedback.
– Reports and custom funnels to monitor the health of your business and improve the efficiency of your customer service teams.

CMS module (CMS Hub)

The CMS module is the content management system needed to easily create and personalize websites for each visitor – optimized for conversion on any device. Thanks to it, you will create websites with the tools you prefer and your marketing team will be able to update themselves thanks to flexible themes. Additionally, in the module you will get access to the resources and ideas of the HubSpot developer community. What do you gain with the functions available in CMS Hub?

– You can improve your site and take action in one place using SEO recommendations.
– Pre-made themes with the option to create custom themes that will help you build a consistent site without worrying about mismatched designs, logos or navigation.
– Managing multiple language domains and optimizing each of them for SEO. Users will be able to switch between languages.
– Ability to update and build the page without the help of a developer or custom code.
– A / B tests – a function that allows you to select up to five different page variations, which HubSpot will monitor and display the most effective option.
– Analyze the types of content, sources and campaigns that attract the most potential customers.
– Tools like GitHub to handle version control and make changes to web resources.
– Add interactive elements such as event registrations, guest books and calculators without setting up an external server, SSL certificate or data transfer processes.
– Create a site-wide content editing environment that allows the marketing team to manage and update the user interface.
– Access to extensive documentation and an active developer community to get started immediately, as well as get answers and ideas.
– Website security thanks to automatic and manual checks for attacks, potential abuse or other anomalies.

Which HubSpot Modules are Best for Your Business?

If you are considering introducing sales and marketing automation in your company, the HubSpot system will definitely have most of the functions you need. So if you have questions about the system’s capabilities and how to implement it in your company – contact us.