#88: [ModMarketing] SEO for AEC Firms, Part 1
Throughout the ModMarketing podcast series, I’ve covered how to set online marketing goals, identify personas, outlining content and promotion strategies. In each of these previous episodes, I’ve touched a little bit on search engine optimization (SEO) but haven’t really done a deep dive.
It’s true that there is so much to SEO. So much, in fact, I could do an entire series or online course dedicated to just that topic. But for now, I’ve split this topic into two episodes to get you started.
In this first episode, I will define what SEO is and how it works. Then I’m going to walk through how you can optimize your own web pages for better SEO. Then the next episode, I’m going to share some other ways that you can increase the authority of your website and why that matters as well as give you a three-step plan to get started improving your SEO.
But first, let’s back up a minute and go back to what the primary goal of a ModMarketing or content marketing program is. And that’s to get your firm found online. This can be done by creating content highlighting your firm’s expertise and subject matter experts. However, it’s not enough to just publish this content on your firm’s website or blog. To have the right potential clients find that content, the content needs to appear in searches. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
According to HubSpot, the definition of SEO is techniques that assist to have your firm’s website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This makes your firm’s website more visible via search engines like Yahoo!, Google, or Bing to those who are seeking solutions that your firm’s brand, service, or product could offer.
Okay, now you know the purpose, listen to this episode to learn more about how you can begin to improve your AEC firm’s SEO rankings to become more visible online.
Here are a few highlights from this episode:
How SEO works
Different website elements that feed into SEO
Importance of consistent content creation
Why how your structure your firm’s website matters
How to optimize images
Meta descriptions – what are they and how they can be used to improve SEO
How structuring your URLs matters
Example of a Meta Description
A meta description is the text that appears in the search results underneath the page title. I’ve provided a screenshot below showing an example that appears with the search of “Deltek Vantagepoint Upgrade.” In that example, when you search Deltek Vantagepoint Upgrade, the title of the Full Sail Partners page appears in the blue clickable text in Google Search. The meta description is below that blue clickable text and also has the keywords upgrading, Deltek, and Vantagepoint in bold.
Meta descriptions can be added to the backend of your website builder and should be written to include keywords and phrases. The meta description should also be relevant to the content that is on the page, so keyword stuffing will actually hurt the results. Also, the meta description length should be between 150-300 characters.
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