Timothy Carter

We all know, but sometimes forget that every website we visit looks a lot different on the back end than it does on the front end. We usually see a beautiful, inviting layout with some of the best content this website owner has to offer. But on the back end is an unintuitive, sometimes jarring smattering of computer code. If you’re familiar with HTML, or any modern programming language, you might be able to parse this, at least slightly – but even the most experienced programmers out there would probably admit it’s easier to understand and engage with a website without this code complicating things. For most people, this is the case. But the web isn’t just about “most people.” We also need to think about people with disabilities. And believe it or not, we also need to think about bots. Even though most people will never see or interact with it, the semantic HTML on the back end of your website can have a meaningful impact on your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and make your site more accessible and navigable for millions of people. So what exactly is semantic HTML? And why is it so important? What Is Semantic HTML? Before we can understand semantic HTML, we need to understand HTML. Hypertext Markup Language (HMTL) is the standard markup language for any materials that are designed to be displayed in web browsers. In other words, it’s a system of scripting and tagging that makes it easier for websites to be interpreted and displayed by web browsers. By default, these browsers don’t display HTML tags; instead, these are featured and processed only on the back end. HTML tags are indispensable in building web pages, and you can use them to deliver specific content assets, provide structure, and even include scripts to influence how the web page is processed and used. Semantic HTML is a strategy of intentionally using HTML tags to offer meaningful descriptions of content on your website. When reviewed, these descriptive HTML tags provide context to help crawlers and bots “understand” the purpose and structure of your website. Semantic HTML elements, while arguably unnecessary for your page to be a minimum viable, functioning product, are incredibly useful for keeping things organized and described in accessible language. It’s perhaps easiest to understand semantic HTML in relation to non-semantic HTML: non-semantic HTML tags like <div> and <span> are used to hold content, but they provide no meaningful descriptions of the relevance or meaning of that content. A website without semantic HTML might have all its content housed with these two tags. In contrast, a website with semantic HTML would use a wide variety of tags and elements to appropriately structure and organize that content. Why Does Semantic HTML Matter? Why should you care about semantic HTML? Well, for starters, it makes the lives of designers and developers much easier. When you look at the HTML code of a website, semantic HTML tags make it incredibly easy to parse. You can see how the author of the website wanted the content to be organized, and even find helpful descriptions about the types of content that are offered. Think of it like a book with an in-depth table of contents, clear chapter titles, bookmarks to flag important sections, and highlighted words throughout the text; it would be much easier to read this book than a book with all of the same text, but no real formatting for navigability or readability. Second, semantic HTML is a way of making your structure, hierarchy, and context clear for bots that crawl your website. Already, you’re probably thinking of the SEO implications; semantic HTML may not be a Google ranking factor, as we’ll see, but it can be valuable in ensuring your website is crawled, indexed, “understood,” and displayed appropriately by Google and other search engines. Depending on your goals, and how you use semantic HTML, this could be a strategy for improving the relevance of specific pieces of content for specific keywords and phrases, changing how your web content is viewed or displayed, or making your best content available in search engine results pages (SERPs). Third, semantic HTML elements can make it easier for people with certain types of disabilities to consume your content and browse your website. For example, people with visual impairments may not be able to see the photos on your website, but they may have software that allows them to read/hear a description of the alt text that describes what’s happening in the photo. To this end, mastering the art of semantic HTML makes your website more accessible. Semantic HTML Elements Semantic HTML can be used across a wide range of elements, including: Header tags (H1-H6). Headings are used to establish a hierarchy with clear labels, and can be used to describe the content included in a given section. The <h1> tag is the most important, with <h6> being the least important. Onsite SEO best practices typically dictate optimizing these header tags with meaningful descriptions – and target keywords. Paragraph tags (<p>). This HTML element is used to represent a block of text. It defines a paragraph for web crawlers. Lists (<ul>/<ol>). Lists can also be used to organize content with unordered and ordered list elements. You can also use <li> to define individual list items. Tables (<table>). While you’re organizing data, you can use the <table> element to create a table, with descriptions for rows (<tr>), columns (<th>), and individual data cells (<td>). Images (<img>). As you can guess, <img> allows you to describe and provide context for photos and graphics. With the alt attribute, you can describe what’s contained in the image, which is especially important for visually impaired users. Articles (<article>). All your news stories, blog posts, and other types of reusable content can be marked with the <article> element. Sections (<section>). These tags allow you to establish different components of a cohesive piece of content, such as chapters of a bigger document. Links or anchors

While their breadcrumbs trail didn’t work out so well in Hansel and Gretel, they work exceedingly well in helping visitors and search engine bots from getting lost while wading through your website. Not only do they make your website more accessible in Google search results, but they also have some implications to your SEO that may prove beneficial enough to take the small amount of time required to implement breadcrumbs. Let’s explore the different types of breadcrumbs, how you might use them and their various implications in terms of how they might prove beneficial to your SEO efforts. What Are Breadcrumbs? Breadcrumbs allow a user to retrace their steps from your home page to the web page that they’re currently viewing. A breadcrumb trail can reflect the structure of your website, a logical path or attributes of the current page. When used properly, they can add context to your innermost web pages while reducing many of the factors that might negatively affect your site’s SEO, such as your bounce rate. The Types of Breadcrumbs While there are many variations of breadcrumbs and breadcrumb schema markup, they generally fall into one of the three following types: 1. Location Breadcrumbs – These are breadcrumbs that trace back through the different layers of your website. Following one of these breadcrumbs will allow users to visit a page that plays host to similar pages in the same category.An example of hierarchy based breadcrumbs would be: Home > Law > Finances > Bankruptcy Information. 2. Path Breadcrumbs – This type of breadcrumb trail represents the various logical paths that a user could use to reach a page. That means multiple breadcrumbs can lead to the same page. 3. Attribute or Keyword Breadcrumbs – Breadcrumbs of this nature follow a similar path as described by location breadcrumbs. The difference is that instead of using something like the page title or another unique identifier, keywords and attributes that describe the page are used. Technical support pages and e-commerce websites are two of the more common places where this breadcrumb is used. The last two types of SEO breadcrumbs can result in duplicate breadcrumbs, which may have a negative impact on how search engines interpret your website’s SEO attempts. If this is the case, then opt for location-based breadcrumbs. The Advantages of Breadcrumbs for Users Breadcrumbs are an essential part of helping users understand how your website works. They encourage positive actions, such as delving deeper into your website to look for other pages that will likely interest them in some way. When users undergo such positive actions, they reduce the negative factors like your website’s bounce rate. This helps your pages rank higher in SERPs. Below is a brief list of all the things that breadcrumbs can do for you website’s users: They help users understand the layout of your website. This makes breadcrumb navigation links one level higher to find similar content while staying on your website. They’re completely optional. They won’t overwhelm users that don’t want to use them, nor will they detract from your page due to their compact nature. They allow users to scan through your website and to view more content at a faster rate. They’re easy to implement and can be understood regardless of a user’s education, professional background or technical knowledge. The Advantages of Breadcrumbs for SEO Despite their numerous benefits for visitors, attribute based breadcrumbs have a number of advantages when it comes to search engines. Breadcrumb structured data can pass on context to the inner and outer pages of your website in a natural and logical way that search engines love. Here’s a brief list of what breadcrumbs can do to improve your SEO: They can point keywords to certain pages while helping search engines to see how one page relates to another on your website. When used in a hierarchy, this improves SEO done to both your category pages and your innermost pages. They reinforce and improve your website’s internal linking site structure. Pairing breadcrumbs with contextual linking to other related pages will result in larger gains when off-site SEO is applied. Schemas can be used to describe them. This allows Google and other advanced search engines to understand that what their robots are looking at is a breadcrumb, which in turn allows for additional functionality like the display of breadcrumbs in SERPs to become available. This can facilitate more users browsing your website’s inner pages. Optimizing Breadcrumbs for SEO Optimizing your breadcrumbs for SEO is a tedious balancing act. Too much optimization can result in over-optimization penalties, but there is no real penalty for “under-optimizing” so long as your breadcrumb structure remains intelligent. When optimizing for keywords, you should follow a structure similar to the one below: A link to your home page using your website’s main keyword > Your main keyword followed by a category keyword > Your main keyword with a keyword that describes the page the user is on As discussed earlier, it may be advantageous to omit certain parts to avoid over-optimizing. For example, it’s fine to just leave the category part as a single keyword or phrase that describes the category. Additional Tips for Usable Breadcrumbs Not all breadcrumbs are created equally, nor do they all perform as well. Below is a small list of tips that will help you ensure your breadcrumbs are friendly towards both users and search engines. If you add breadcrumbs with the right schema markup, then you can use almost any kind of styling when it comes to your breadcrumbs. It may be advantageous to style your breadcrumbs in a way that makes them appealing for visitors to use. If you can, use a plugin like Yoast SEO to quickly incorporate breadcrumbs schema markup. Don’t rely solely on your breadcrumbs. As Hansel and Gretel would likely say, relying on just breadcrumbs is a dangerous and fool-hardy move. Don’t replace the vital parts of your website like your navigation and internal linking with breadcrumbs, but do

Achieving true link building services at scale (and eventually improved rank in search engines) only happens after you reach the organic traffic tipping point. It’s the coveted position where your quality content achieves enough SERP visibility that you start to receive regular inbound links as a reward for your hard work. But this isn’t something that occurs just after a few months of effort. Scaling your link building to the point that you receive daily, quality inbound links from other bloggers can take years. There needs to be a consistent purpose in order to enjoy sustainable results. More specifically, quality backlinks at scale should be the aim of every webmaster. But building truly natural backlinks at scale can be time-intensive and expensive. In this blog post we discuss: the difficulties in scaling link building and how to scale your broken link building with a great (internal or outsourced) team. Let’s get at it! Is Your Link Building Stale? When you first launch a link building strategy for your website, it’s easy to see progress. Each step feels like you’re taking a giant leap toward something exciting and opportunistic. You go from zero backlinks to 10 backlinks – all the way up to 100! Your efforts are being rewarded and the data is there to support your expensive and time-consuming investment. Then, rather suddenly, it all slows down. It’s not that you’re moving in the wrong direction, but just that you aren’t making any significant gains. At some point, every business finds itself in a build-links rut where the underlying strategy becomes stale, repetitive, and low-returning. Nothing seems to work and the excitement of progress wears thin. The competition is surpassing you and all of those little techniques you were using so successfully six months ago no longer seem to provide much of a jolt. Listen…we’ve all been there. Every business finds itself in a marketing rut from time to time. And if you’re truly invested a link building strategies, you’ll reach a point where you feel like you’re treading water. The first step is to recognize that this is where you are. The second step is to create scalable systems and structures that help you break out of the rut. 6 Ways to Scale Up Your Link Building Scalable relationship-build links is a sexy term that rolls off the tongue and instantly makes you sound smart, but what does it mean? It means getting more consistent high-quality links built to your website: Most people have an incorrect view of what scalable Backlinking is. As digital marketing expert Geoff Kenyon explains, the majority of businesses and marketers try to find a way to transform Backlinking into a process and scale link building the production of that product. But this almost always leads to something gimmicky and unsustainable – like automated directories, link networks, comment and forum spam, the purchase of sidebar few links, and automated social bookmarking. While there’s a time and place for trying new things, the truth is that the staples of link-building have remained relatively consistent over the years and will continue to be predictable in the foreseeable future. If you’re failing at scaling different link-building products, then perhaps you need to be scaling your link-building processes, perhaps using a productized method of SEO sprints. A good goal would be to identify the biggest pain points in your current (manual) link-building process and to improve and streamline it wherever possible. If nothing else, you should be on the lookout for opportunities to spend your time and creative energy more wisely. For some brands – perhaps yours included – this looks like this: 1. Create More Linkable Assets Content is the foundation of any good link building campaign. This sounds rather elementary – and it is – but it’s amazing how many brands take shortcuts and invests in link-building without first establishing an inventory of quality content. In order to generate links, you need linkable assets. Every brand’s linkable assets will look different, but there are certain elements and characteristics that define this type of content: Content should be evergreen and timeless, so as to continue providing value long after publication. Content should be relevant to your target market. Linkable assets should be visually pleasing. Written content still works, but it should be formatted and supplemented in a way that appeals to visual thinkers. Focus on link bait type articles (e.g. common statistics, listicles, etc.) The more sticky, linkable assets you have, the far greater your chances are of generating backlinks over time. Try as you might, there’s simply no replacement for quality content. 2. Establish a Link Building Teams As Google’s Matt Cutts once said, Link building is sweat plus creativity. When building links efforts go stale, it typically has something to do with the people running the campaign. Generally speaking, they lack the expertise to take the strategy to the next level and are tired of doing the same old repetitive tasks with minimal understanding of the “why” behind them. To scale up your efforts, you need a team of people who are highly skilled and trained at crafting content, finding and securing building links opportunities, monitoring progress, and doing technical SEO work. Some of these people may work directly for you. Others may need to be outsourced, but your building links team should include: Project manager Outreach process reps Outreach manager Writers Editor Publishers If you’re looking to hire writers, I suggest ProBlogger’s premium job listing. For $75, you’re likely to receive 100+ candidates to review: The best link-building teams for agencies are those that perform white-label link-building at scale. In fact, most of our revenue is from other agencies who use our systems and processes to scale up their link building efforts. 3. Research the Mess Out of Your Competition It’s good to be focused on your brand, but be wary of putting on blinders and ignoring the world around you. There’s tremendous value in doing market research and understanding what your competitors are

Keyword research is relatively simple (and we’ll get to it shortly). But online keyword competition can be fierce. Consider the the total number of SERP results for “SEO”: Is it any wonder why you might be having difficulty ranking for a particular keyword or key phrase? The sheer volume of competitors in online search in nearly every conceivable niche makes those top 10 positions more coveted (and valuable) than ever. So, if you want to be successful in SEO, you need to understand what people are searching for, how often they’re searching for it, and why they’re searching for it. So how can you find this information? It all starts with a repeatable keyword research process of uncovering keyword phrase opportunities for your brand to rank higher in search engines. Step 1. Brainstorm your “seed” keywords You’ll start your keyword research by selecting what I call “seed” keywords. Seed keywords are those that you either already know your target audience is using to search for your product or services, or that you would use if you were a member of your target audience. Also be sure to include SEO power words in your seed keywords list. For example, since SEO.co is a content marketing agency, I can easily guess that my target audience might search for “content marketing agency,” or perhaps one or more of the following variations of that keyword: Content marketing services Link building services Digital marketing services Content writing SEO etc. When it comes to your initial focus, especially if you are a startup doing digital marketing, you will want to focus on the long-tail, particularly long-tail keywords where you feel you have a competitive advantage for matching the search intent of your target audience. Long-tail keywords are extended phrase search queries, such as “what is the best roofing company in Wyoming?” Compare that to a traditional “head” keyword or keyword phrase like “roofing company” or “roofing company Wyoming.” There’s no strict line to draw here, though generally, if a query is in sentence format, it can be considered as a long-tail phrase. Long-tail keyword research can be more advantageous because when they tend to have a much lower competition than head keywords. The catch is that the long tail, by nature, have low monthly search volume. It’s great to use long-tail keywords to rank quickly for niche positions, but if you’re looking for some heavy-hitting rankings to build over the long-term, head keywords are better. Step 2. Add seed keywords into your preferred keyword research tool Now that you’ve got your seed keywords, it’s time to start gathering data on them. Start by plugging at least one from each group into various third party and even free keyword research tools. Moz and Ahrefs are the industry standard, but don’t forget to use third party keyword tools in conjunction with Google Search Console (GSC), Google Analytics and Google Ads Keyword Planner. All three include quality data for finding quality keyword opportunities. Below is a Moz screenshot of the search results for my keyword, “content marketing services.” Source: Moz Keyword Explorer Or the same result from Ahrefs: If you want to generate an expanded keyword list of long-tail keywords, we like to use AnswerthePublic, which provides a fan-based UX for showing new keyword ideas, searches related to one another and other keyword variations you may not have considered. AnswerthePublic fan graph related result for the phrase “content marketing” Step 3. Conduct competitor research & content gap analysis Next, you’ll want to take a closer look at the competition, and what types of strategies they’re using in their search campaigns and how you stack up. Competitor content gap analysis helps you identify content opportunities by analyzing what your competitors are ranking for, but you are not. By understanding the gaps in their content strategy, you can develop and optimize your own content to capture those missed opportunities. Ahrefs “Content Gap Analysis” tool to help you understand where and how your competition is ranking for various keywords in search engines and how you can create new pages and posts to find new content ideas for your next post or page: You’ll get to see their names listed, as well as their relative competition “level,” and where they’re winning the keyword game. You can export the data and manipulate it to source keyword ideas for your next blog post. Compare the pages that rank for your target keywords with your own website’s content. Look for gaps where your competitors have content that you don’t. These gaps may indicate opportunities to create new content or improve existing content to fill those voids. SEMRush and Ahrefs are fantastic automatically listing some of your “main organic competitors” once you enter your website domain name: (Image source: SEMRush) Examine the content that your competitors have created for the keywords you’re targeting. Look at factors such as content length, format (blog post, video, infographic, etc.), depth of information, and engagement signals like comments and social shares. This analysis will help you understand why their content is performing well. There are a few reasons you need to learn about your competitors: Inspiration. If you can understand how they’ve optimized their websites, where they currently rank, and how they’re getting more relevant customers to their sites, you can adopt some of these techniques for yourself. Understanding competition levels. When you analyze keywords, you’ll be able to gauge what level of competition you’re in for. Are your competitors all fighting viciously for web real estate, or is it an open field? Discover weaknesses and opportunities. Are there certain niches that your competitors haven’t been able to touch? Are there opportunities for development they’ve missed? Based on your analysis, develop strategies to address the content gaps. This may involve creating new content targeting specific keywords or enhancing existing content to make it more comprehensive, valuable, or engaging. Consider the unique value propositions you can bring to the table. After implementing your content improvement strategies, monitor the performance of your

Raise your hand if, after launching your landing page(s): You see conversions flat line or drop Audience engagement with your landing page is paltry Your revenues and up-sells as a result of your pages fall Your search engine rankings for that page fall  So how on earth are you supposed to tell why your landing page isn’t working? How do you fix it? In this guide, we present to you 50 possible reasons your landing page isn’t working—with landing page optimization solutions for each. Why Landing Pages Matter If landing pages are so complicated in the first place, why use them? Landing pages provide destinations. No matter what types of marketing and advertising you’re pursuing, your users need somewhere to go. Landing pages provide that ideal destination. They’re a focal point for conversion. Landing pages give you the opportunity to confront your users with a conversion opportunity, maximizing your potential revenue and/or customer value. They allow for segmentation. Because landing pages are separate from your site, you can also use them to segment your target demographics and cater to them individually. So with all these advantages, why isn’t your landing page seeing better results? Why You Aren’t Getting More Landing Page Conversions Let’s diagnose your landing page problem: 1. You haven’t measured anything. First, ask yourself how you’re able to determine the success of your landing page. Are you going by a gut feeling? Are you just noticing that nobody has filled out your contact form? If you aren’t measuring more in-depth metrics, such as how many people are visiting your landing page or what your exit rate is, you’ll blind yourself to the real variables responsible for your performance. This is inexcusable, especially since so many free tools, like Google Analytics, are on the market. If you haven’t been measuring and analyzing your progress, get started immediately—you’ll need those numbers to measure how effective your correctional strategies are. 2. It isn’t loading properly. Don’t scoff at this. You’d be shocked and embarrassed to learn how many people scratch their heads over why more people aren’t converting when their pages don’t load properly to begin with. Fortunately, this is simple to detect and fix. If you’re looking for the easiest way, try visiting your landing page using as many different devices and browsers as you can think of. Is it loading? Are all your images viewable? Is your form easy to see? Is your page loading fast? You can use a tool like BrowserStack to help test this. Otherwise, be sure to check out Google Search Console, which can tell you if your website is down and help you track down the reason. 3. It doesn’t view correctly on mobile devices. Mobile SEO is a critical feature for your landing page, just like your main website, as the majority of traffic, for many businesses, now comes from mobile devices. Because landing page layouts are especially sensitive to directing users’ eyes and interactions, it’s vital that your page look attractive and engaging on mobile devices specifically. Is the bulk of your content easily viewable? Is all your text readable? Are your buttons easy to find and click, without zooming? Is it able to scroll easily? If not, you may wish to reconsider your design to cater to these mobile users. Again, BrowserStack can help diagnose landing page problems here. 4. The buttons or form fields aren’t functioning properly. Your web form is the star of your landing page; if it isn’t functioning properly, your landing page visitors aren’t going to proceed with converting. Run multiple tests on multiple browsers and devices to make sure your functionality is intuitive and responsive. For example Is it easy to click into a form field? Do you proactively warn your visitors when they haven’t filled out a required field? Are your buttons easy to click? Do your dropdown menus load quickly and easily? Any deviation here could be an excuse to abandon your landing page, so don’t take chances. 5. You aren’t targeting a niche audience. Who, specifically, are you targeting with your landing page? If you don’t have an answer, or you have a generic one like “our customers,” you’re doing something wrong. One of the greatest strengths of a landing page is its ability to communicate with high precision to one specific group of people. If you aren’t taking advantage of that high relevance, your users aren’t going to be engaged. Think carefully about what niche you want to target, considering your competitors as well as your demographics’ dispositions, and narrow your focus to that audience. 6. Your tone and presentation aren’t appealing to your target audience. Of course, if you already have a target audience in mind, you could be suffering from a lack of relevance—or an inability to target those users effectively for search intent. For example, you could be using a vocabulary that’s too high for your users to follow, or so low that it compromises your online reputation. You could seem too “boring” to your young users, or too “juvenile” to your older ones. Examine your brand voice carefully as it permeates your landing page, and reevaluate the tone you use. A good brand can outrank other, more well-known competitors. 7. Your color scheme is off. When it comes to the colors you use in your landing page, there aren’t many “right” or “wrong” decisions. However, there are a few best practices you’ll want to follow. For starters, your coloration should be in line with your brand and your industry—if the colors don’t feel like “you,” or if they give the wrong impression, it could interfere with your results. Your coloration should also enhance your text’s readability—if it makes it hard to read, you’ll deal with the consequences—and it should help to call out prominent areas of the page, such as your call-to-action (CTA). 8. Your design is obsolete. When was your landing page designed? Who designed it? The fundamentals of SEO web design have changed significantly over

Search engine optimization, including link building is an increasingly difficult task. Thanks to the broadened benefits of SEO and link building; with time and effort, it’s easily possible to build up to earning thousands of visitors per month. However, this appeal sometimes morphs into a lust. The desire to pursue SEO as a strategy becomes something like a get rich quick scheme, where the idea of thousands of inbound visitors takes precedent over the realistic and patient applications of SEO tactics and best practices. Inevitably, entrepreneurs possessed by this rampant desire end up disappointed, feeling that the strategy wasn’t worthwhile because it failed to meet their expectations. Without SEO goals, it’s nearly impossible to objectively measure your progress, but with too lofty or unfounded SEO objectives, you’ll only set yourself up for a skewed sense of disappointment. Setting realistic SEO goals is the remedy for this problem, and there are three rules to do it effectively: 1. Factor in Your Available Resources Your goals need to be grounded in your means to achieve them. That seems obvious, but to many entrepreneurs and marketers new to SEO, building ranks is akin to switching on a light; you’re either making progress, or you aren’t. SEO simply doesn’t work that way. Instead, the amount of effort and type of effort you put into it has a direct impact on the eventual results you’ll achieve. Therefore, if you’re only investing a few minutes a day to your campaign, it would be unreasonable to set a goal that a large company with an entire dedicated SEO team might set. In other words, your budget of time and money will be your biggest limitation in SEO. There are several of these factors you’ll have to keep in mind: Consider the man-hours you’re pouring into your efforts. Are you doing this yourself in short bursts? Do you have one dedicated person? Five dedicated people? Consider how many outlets you’re using in conjunction with your SEO campaign—including how much link building, onsite and offsite content writing and how many social platforms you’re using. Be realistic about your expertise. If this is your first company, or your first time launching an SEO campaign in this industry, be more conservative with your goal setting. There is no objective way to go about this, but do make sure to temper your expectations with the type of effort you’re putting forth. SEO can take months and years, so patience is a necessary virtue. 2. Use Long Time Periods and Relative Measurements This is almost two rules in one, but they’re both related to the way you measure your goals. First, use long periods of time to measure your progress. Don’t look for rapid climbs in growth in the span of a few days or weeks. Instead, you’ll have to look at periods of months or more—this is because it takes a long time for SEO to show results. It’s also important to use long time periods to compare against each other—for example, it’s better to compare a first three months with a second three months than one month to a second month. This is because traffic and rankings fluctuate, sometimes randomly, and could skew your data if you’re only using a small sample size. Relative measurements are also important. Rather than aiming for an objective goal, such as getting 1,000 visitors a month by September, aim for something less concrete, like at least 10 percent visitor growth, month over month, until September. Using firm numbers can sometimes blind you to your otherwise substantial progress. 3. Make Adjustments. Under most circumstances, goals should not be changed. You set a goal at the beginning of a given period, and follow that goal to the end. In the world of SEO, it’s okay to make adjustments throughout the course of your ongoing SEO strategy, and it’s because your strategy is ongoing. It is a fluid process that undergoes nearly constant changes, so it only makes sense that your goals and expectations should change along with those circumstances. Let’s say you’ve set a goal to increase your monthly organic traffic by 25 percent within the first four months of your campaign. In month two, you bring on a new freelance writer to increase your onsite content and social media efforts. At that point, it would be reasonable to increase the expectations of your goal. On the other hand, let’s say in month two, Google releases a new algorithm change that sets you back several positions on a number of target keyword topics. At that point, you would need to lower your expectations. 4. Don’t obsess over “traffic” There is a tendency for business owners and entrepreneurs to focus on “generating more traffic” with SEO. While getting more traffic is the point of SEO, if you focus on this too much, it’s going to side-track you from more important goals. Pursuing “more traffic” is a trap and makes a terrible goal. Remember, if a goal doesn’t support your main objective, it’s a distraction. Creating hoards of traffic isn’t going to get you more sales and leads on its own. Traffic has to be relevant, but also, your web pages need to be convincing enough to convert. Think of it this way. Say your current conversion rate is 3% on a given page. If you spend a large portion of your SEO budget generating traffic, your conversion rate will probably drop significantly because you’re not doing anything to increase conversions. More traffic doesn’t guarantee more sales. If your conversion rate is low, obsessing over traffic will eat up all the time you should be spending on more important goals, like optimizing your pages for higher conversions. 5. Create milestones A major component in setting realistic SEO goals requires setting milestones. A milestone is like a mini-goal that, when achieved, tells you you’re on the right path. For example, say your goal is to rank in the top 30 results for a specific search phrase. Currently, your position is