Who doesn’t love jamming along to a playlist while they work?
Since we’re all busy working away creating great content and improving SEO, we thought we would share a playlist of some of our favorite songs that resonate with how we implement an SEO strategy.
Give it a listen on Spotify and let us know in the comments what you would add to this playlist.
What Does SEO Have to Do with a Punk Rock Playlist?
Search engine optimization is a process that starts with a problem, typically the problem being that your website isn’t visible in search engine results. We’ve handpicked 25 songs that are constantly spinning around the office that we feel represent what we do.
1. Zero Visibility by Rise Against
We usually begin the process when we hear a client has zero visibility in Google. They may have just had a new website built or an old website completely overhauled, but it’s virtually invisible in search results. This is a common scenario and it just means we have some work to do.
2. In Search by Pulley
The problem that you’re running into is very common for us to hear. You’ve tried to find your brand in search by looking up the products and services you sell, but no matter what you try, your website just isn’t showing up where you want it to.
3. Going Nowhere by Zero Down
You try a handful of things to improve your SEO, but you feel like it’s still going nowhere and you’re not seeing results.
4. Searching by Pennywise
You keep searching the products or services your company offers, hoping your site is indexed and ranked, but you’re not seeing results. And if you don’t show up, you know you’re missing out on potential customers.
5. Every Time I Look For You by Blink 182
If I’m a customer and every time I look for you or your products and services I can’t find your website, I may turn to one of your competitors. This is a common scenario business owners face and could be why they are considering SEO.
6. Nowheresville by Strung Out
If you’ve been in nowheresville on Google for a while, it’s undoubtedly hurting new customer acquisition and sales for your business. It’s at this point that business owners tend to reach out to an SEO company like us. We start by learning more about your brand and then we perform and audit of your website to see where we can spot opportunities with technical SEO, content or off-site promotion of your website.
7. Crawl by Alkaline Trio
The first step we take to understand your technical SEO is to run a crawl of your website. Using tools like Screaming Frog, SEMRush and Ahrefs, a crawl will mimic how Google reads and interprets your website. This informs us of any issues that could be preventing progress in search engine results. It will also provide us with actionable items to start improving your SEO.
8. All Heads Down by Hot Water Music
The first phase of a typical SEO campaign is improving the website structure itself. This spans everything from how it’s coded, resolving broken links on the site, adding alt tags to images and improving pagespeed. During this phase, we’re all heads down in the project, working to get the foundation right.
9. Complicated by Face to Face
Depending on the platform your website is built on, its technical SEO may be rather complicated. Basic structural updates may require the assistance of a developer – we can either work directly with your web developer or jump in with our web development team.
10. Work by Jimmy Eat World
The technical component of an SEO campaign requires about 30-45 days of work. During this time, we review your analytics, data from Google Search Console and run multiple crawls of the website until major issues are resolved. Once the technical SEO is in a solid spot, we begin to see some initial metrics.
11. The Impression That I Get by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Once we enhance the site’s technical SEO, we start to see keyword-impression and page-level metrics for your website showing up in Google Search Console. This means your site is more accessible to Google and it now understands more about it. Remember that the impressions that you get are an indication of visibility but not necessarily customer action (like a click).
12. Too Many Words by The Suicide Machines
With technical SEO optimized, we turn our attention to content. Content ranges from product descriptions and collection pages to lengthy guides, FAQ articles and everything in between. In the context of SEO, content refers to the words on each of your pages. We assess each type of content on your website and make recommendations to optimize it, usually making it more keyword-centric. Optimizing content can include enhancing the word count of the content to thoroughly cover the topic at hand (remember, good content that is helpful to the user can never have too many words), improving how the content links internally to other pages or writing brand new content to fill in gaps.
13. Chasing Rainbows by No Use for a Name
Keyword research is the backbone of any content strategy. We have to understand the intent of the keywords people use when looking for the products or services your business offers. Comprehensive keyword research is required to ensure content is thoroughly optimized. We also want to ensure we have the right keyword targets and aren’t chasing rainbows by targeting impossibly difficult keywords.
14. Come Out Swinging by The Offspring
With technical SEO complete and a content strategy implemented, your website is ready to come out swinging. It will take roughly 3-6 months to start to realize the benefits of our SEO efforts. Google and Bing both take time to crawl, index and thoroughly understand changes on your site, as well as any new content that is published.
15. Dressed to Kill by New Found Glory
With an SEO strategy taking off that is dressed to kill by impressing Google, the time comes for the toughest part of any SEO campaign – being patient to see results with traffic and leads. During this period of time, we analyze analytics data and Google Search Console data to make continued changes.
16. It’s a Long Way to the Promise Land by Bad Religion
We often tell clients that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a long way to the promise land, but once you reach top rankings and start earning organic traffic to your website, you’ll instantly be happy with the wait. Plus, with your investment in SEO, you’ll realize a positive ROI.
17. The Waiting Hurt by No Motiv
It’s also important to remember that no two sites are ever the same in Google’s algorithmic eyes. Just because something works fast for one site’s rankings, it might take longer for another site serving a completely different niche. The waiting hurt can be affected by things like competition and the age of your website too.
18. Cautious Optimistic by MxPx
Along the SEO journey, you’ll likely see temporary increases in rankings and traffic. It’s normal for keyword positioning to jump up and down. We have to be a cautious optimistic with instant results knowing that it takes a bit of time to find long-standing results.
19. Fall Back Down by Rancid
Your SEO is going to experience some bumps in the road. Google updates its search algorithm an estimated 400 times a year and frequently updates the look and feel of its search result pages. This requires a quick response to stay compliant with the search engine’s expectations and to be aware of changes. While your rankings might jump up, fall back down and jump back up again, they will balance out as long as we abide by Google standards.
20. No Greater Fight by Good Riddance
SEO is one of the highest-return marketing strategies and can sometimes 3x or 4x your traffic. For this reason, it’s also very competitive. It’s important for us to conduct ongoing competitor research to know what other websites are in the same market, and what they are doing in terms of content creation and SEO. When it comes to the fight for organic traffic, there’s no greater fight.
21. Anchor by Cave In
Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about the link aspect of an SEO campaign. We thoroughly review every aspect of your link profile to understand who is linking to your website, including the credibility of external sites linking to you, the destination pages that are linked, the anchor text of your links and more. Link development plays a key role in SEO and can be the difference maker for many websites. Think of every link as a vote of confidence in your product, service or brand. The more quality votes you earn, the better your rankings will be (in most cases).
22. Authority by Goldfinger
Focusing on sites that offer credibility and authority is a major component of your link development strategy. We work with you to earn links from reputable sites, niche-specific news sites and regional directories for local businesses. We keep quality metrics in mind with any type of link we source. The more we can increase the authority of your site, the greater your brand will stand out in search results (in most cases).
23. Penguins and Polar Bears by Millencolin
If you’re familiar with link building, you’ve probably heard of Google’s link-specific algorithms that can sometimes penalize a site. While we don’t hear about this too much anymore, we still exercise caution with every link we source. You don’t have to worry about Google’s pandas, penguins and polar bears penalities…that’s a lot of p’s and no, there’s not actually a polar bear algorithm update. We earn real links from well-known publishers that will benefit your SEO and likely provide you with referral traffic too.
24. Built to Last by Sick of It All
While any SEO strategy will require continuous improvement over time, the strategies we create are built to last. Every strategy is unique to every site, but we abide by best practices and data-driven methods to grow your SEO. We wouldn’t be celebrating our 4th year as an SEO agency if our strategies weren’t built with the long-term in mind.
25. Better Things by The Bouncing Souls
That’s it, you’re on to better things with a well-structured SEO plan in place. There’s no better digital marketing feeling than seeing that your keywords are ranking and that you’re seeing returns in organic traffic, new customers and sales. But remember that an SEO’s job is never complete, even with first-position rankings. We maintain your search engine rankings in a number of ways and do our best to play defense against competitors over time. We also have to be reactive to search engine algorithm updates and continue to refine and optimize your content.
Let’s Jam
So there you have it — a bit of a rock and roll tour of our approach to SEO. Almost every client project begins with the frustration of not being found in search results, which leads us to address and resolve common technical SEO issues. We then assess all of the content on your site to ensure it is accessible, understandable, intent-driven to be helpful to your users and of course, competitive. Mix in a link development strategy to grow the credibility of your website and you have a sound SEO strategy in play.
If we can help you with any of these areas, please feel free to reach out here or at [email protected].
These are just a few of our favorites. What other songs remind you of SEO or digital marketing? Let us know in the comments!
