D I G I TA L M A R K E T I N G S E A R C H E N G I N E O P T I M I Z AT I O N ( S E O ) SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) C O N T E N T S T R AT E G Y
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) 90% of all website traffic comes from the first page in Google Search. If your company isn t listed on page one, your customers won t find you. And Google is constantly changing the algorithm that determines whether your site is relevant and ranked in search. In order to stay ahead of these changes, it s critical to apply a strong SEO strategy with continuous evolution to both your website and your digital marketing outreach. Sounds intimidating, doesn t it? Hawthorn Creative can help. What Do Search Engines Look For? There s no published algorithm that outlines exactly what Google evaluates to determine how websites should rank. What s more, the algorithms change regularly. But an enormous amount of time and research is spent analyzing what impacts ranking results. Here s what we know: Search engines evaluate websites based on relevance and popularity. RELEVANCE Search engines want to know what your website is about. A search engine s bots regularly crawl and analyze every website on the Internet, identifying how each site is relevant to a specific audience. They do this by looking for keywords in the website s content that signify the topic of the content, as well as certain sections of the website s content management system (CMS). The bots then gather this information and bring it back to Google data centers, where the information is stored, updated, and retrieved when people search for a specific topic on Google using those critical keywords. POPULARITY Google is placing more weight on a website s popularity than ever before. They are looking closely at whether a website provides a positive user experience and whether other websites value the content on the website enough to link back to it. Basically, do people and websites like and value your site? To determine the popularity of a site, search engines look closely at time on site, load time, bounce rate, average number of links clicked, responsiveness, and how many authoritative websites link back to content on your website. We know... SEO sounds daunting. But we ve got a team of digital marketing experts who can help. Review our list of options, and we ll ensure that search engines understand exactly what your website is all about and why your website and content are valuable to users searching online.
SEO SEO Audit $525 per website An SEO audit evaluates the health of your current website. We ll look closely at your website CMS, link structure, domain authority, and overall website performance. We ll then provide you with an outline of what needs to be improved or updated in order to increase your SEO success rate. Here s what we ll do: Examine your website CMS, your link structure, web performance factors (such as site speed, bounce rate, responsiveness, etc.), and any existing optimization efforts. Analyze your domain authority in relation to your competitors, and identify your SEO strengths and weaknesses in relation to theirs. Develop a written evaluation that outlines which current elements of your web strategy are effective and which need improvement. We ll then provide a proposed action plan for improvement. Keyword Strategy $975 for websites up to 30 pages. $1,375 for websites from 31 50 pages. Custom quote for larger sites. Your targeted keywords are the most critical component of on-page SEO. Our team will: Analyze your business and your industry. Discuss which terms you want your business to be found for. Review the keywords your competitors are optimized for. Identify which keywords are currently driving the most traffic with the least competition in search. Propose keywords optimized for each page. Implement keywords and descriptions into alt, meta, title and header tags, and optimize links and URLs within your website s CMS. Complete SEO Strategy $1,875 for websites up to 30 pages. $2,500 for websites from 31 50 pages. Custom quote for larger sites. Since Google weighs both site relevance and popularity as the critical factors in determining rankings, it s important that you do more than just tell the search engines what your site s about. Your website also needs to load quickly and maintain user engagement through maximized time on site. You need to maintain a lower bounce rate, regularly post fresh content, and ensure that users can seamlessly access your site on mobile and desktop. Basically, while search engines need to know what your sites about, they also analyze site performance to determine whether users value the experience on your site. The better the experience, the higher the rankings. Here s what we ll do: Complete keyword strategy and implementation as outlined above. Identify issues that may impact bounce rates, site speed, and responsive use. Set up Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (if not in place), and crawl your site for indexing. Submit full sitemap to Google and Bing, and run a Google penalty check. Review and update internal link structure. Build out Google+ page to aid with search (if one isn t already in place). Perform an initial backlink analysis, and suggest avenues for increased optimization. Develop proposal for ongoing SEO strategy that can be deployed by you or Hawthorn s team.
SEO Monthly SEO (MONTHLY RECURRING) $625 for websites up to 30 pages. $875 for websites from 31 50 pages. Custom quote for larger sites. Standard monthly SEO ensures your website CMS remains updated and on-page SEO remains optimized. Updates to your CMS are critical to the health of your site in order to ensure optimal speed, functioning, and overall performance. If website plug-ins are not regularly updated, they may stop working and the site could become vulnerable to hacking. Continuous optimization of your keywords and traffic sources will ensure that your maximizing your communication with search engines and your website visitors. Here s what we ll do every month: Review newly added images and copy on your website for errors, and identify if any of it may be slowing your site down. (Yes, speed impacts your search rankings. If your website takes more than three seconds to load, your rankings may be compromised.) Review website analytics to identify traffic sources. Identify the top keywords that are driving traffic to your site, and make recommendations for future content creation based around these keywords and concepts. Identify the primary sources of your incoming traffic, and make recommendations for how you can enhance these channels. Apply any necessary updates to your website s plug-ins and CMS. Review Google Webmaster Tools to ensure the site is being properly indexed, searched, and crawled. Review social channels to ensure that your content is being optimized among multiple platforms and your posting structure is in line with best practices. Continue to optimize title, meta, alt, and header tags. Each quarter, we ll provide you with a summary report that outlines our findings, along with any recommendations your staff can implement to improve your SEO performance. **Some plug-in and CMS updates may cause something else to break on your website. While this doesn t happen all of the time, it is an inherent problem in website maintenance. That said, updates are critical to your website s safety and should always be completed. Errors and issues that may occur through updates can usually be fixed within a reasonable time frame (one to three hours). In the event that an update causes an error on your site, our web developers will work to fix them at our standard hourly rates.
CONTENT STRATEGY According to Google, content remains king. But the type and quality of content you post is vital to determining whether you actually engage your customers and increase website traffic. In fact, poorly crafted or manipulated content can actually hurt your site ranking (reference). Frequency of postings is critical, too. Fresh content encourages brand followers and ensures that search engines crawl and index your site more regularly. Our writers and strategists can help ensure you develop the right content that engages more customers and drives your search results. We offer multiple options. Pick one or all, and we ll create a custom quote that s fine tuned to your content goals. Content Creation IDEA SOURCING You may have a great writer on staff who is currently crafting content for your site. But does he understand how to identify which content will gain the most attention? Does he develop story ideas with unique topics that are on-brand and aligned with your marketing goals? We can help. Our content team can research your brand and analyze search traffic in order to identify the topics that will garner the most attention. We ll then develop story ideas for your staff to easily execute. This collaborative approach will help you develop a robust edit calendar that primes your team to create content that drives action. CONTENT CREATION If you don t have the time or resources to write your content, we ll take care of that, too. Our team will source the ideas (as outlined above) and then write, edit, and deliver the stories to your inbox, or we ll post directly to your website and social channels. CONTEST CREATION Contests are a great way to increase online engagement. Our digital team can design and deploy consumer contests through your website and social channels that drives interaction and increased followers. Content Distribution POSTING Once you ve developed your content, let s make sure it s read! We ll post your stories and images to your website and all social platforms, making sure that all copy and photos are formatted and stylized for the most effective reader engagement. EMAIL The best way to actively reach customers and drive them to your website is via email. But straight promotional campaigns are no longer driving customer loyalty or sales. Integrating promotions with content is proven to increase sales and decrease unsubscribes. Our team can design stylized emails that match your brand. We ll then combine content with promotional messages and send through your existing marketing automation platform. Analytics Once we develop and post your content, we ll make sure it s driving results. We ll analyze content performance, identify top performing posts, examine traffic sources, and recap our findings on a quarterly basis. We ll then tweak your strategy accordingly and provide an outline of any changes we plan to make.