Tuesday, November 16, 2021

BUS410 - The Search Engine Optimization Paper (8/9/2021)

 

The Search Engine Optimization Paper

            Every day many people conduct web searches for information, products, reviews, job openings, recipes, funny videos, and much more. As of April 202, people in the United States conducted over 21 billion search queries within the month. Users conducted 13.5 billion of these searches through Google (Johnson, 2021). That is an average of 700 million searches daily, or 450 million per day on Google. This amount of traffic is an opportunity for companies to navigate users to their websites at no cost through organic searches. The competition is heavy, which makes visibility in the top search results a challenge. According to Internet Live Stats, as of August 2nd there are approximately 1.88 billion active websites online (Armstrong, 2021). Companies can use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies like checking the webpages for technological issues, keyword planning, quality content, and backlinks to improve their search rankings.

Part 1: On-Site SEO

            One strategy to improve rankings is to assure that the webpage is working as intended. A free scan at Boostability.com reveals that ASI Accurate Partitions has several page and website issues. One minor fix is that the company does not have an online presence on all the online directories such as Bing Maps, Here, or Yelp (Boostability, n.d.). The company can easily register the business on these accounts. Secondly, some of the images do not have alternative text which means that impaired users will have no context for the images. Additionally, there is no text backup if the images fail to load (Boostability, n.d.). Lastly, the website has 88 pages with 2740 words on only five pages (Boostability, n.d.). Less pages means less potential problems, so any outdated pages or pages that generate no traffic need to be eliminated (Dean, 2018). The site also needs more content to engage visitors and potentially backlink to other websites.

Major Performance Issues

            Two of the websites major performance issues are speed and generic or non-existent titles and Meta tags. Web Vitals is a measurement that Google uses to score the visitor’s experience and then rank websites according to these figures. The website scored “poor” in visual stability, 10 seconds for loading speed, and a 244ms input delay (Boostability, n.d.). Not all of the mobile web pages are using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) which means the pages do not load at optimum speed. Boostability gave the website a 23 percent performance score because of the amount of time it took for the pages to load. The first displayed content took 5.7 second to load; the largest ten seconds. Forty-seven percent of visitors will abandon a site that takes more than two seconds to load (Boostability, n.d.). Increasing the web page speed will encourage visitors to stay on the page for longer. A higher dwell rate improves a page’s ranking, but also pages that run faster generally outrank pages with lagging or loading issues (Dean, 2018). This is probably because Google penalizes slow pages by ranking them lower in search results (Boostability, n.d.). Improving the webpage speed will improve the user experience and rank higher on search engine results pages (SERP). 

            Appearing within the first page of a SERP is the goal for many companies because that is the page that received the most traffic. The goal of SEO is to rank high for as many relevant searches as possible on a SERP. However, even the most relevant keyword is useless if few to zero people search for it, so companies need to balance relevance and traffic (Larson & Draper, 2020).  Only some of Accurate Partitions’ web pages have unique Meta descriptions, while some have no information listed at all. This means that the search engine’s select default information to search by and display the SERP listing. Some of the page titles and descriptions are duplicates (Boostability, n.d.). Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko suggests placing relevant keywords that appear in other top search result listings in the title and description tag to boost the page’s ranking (Dean, 2018).  By adding keywords in the title and Meta description, a website can gain a higher ranking on SERPs.

Keywords

            ASI Accurate Partitions is number one under the Google SERP for the search term “ASI Accurate Partitions. The company does not appear on the first SERP for any of the search terms or category page search terms. The Google Ads Keyword plan below indicates that the terms bathroom stall, bathroom partitions, toilet partitions, bathroom stall dividers, toilet stalls, restroom stall, bathroom stall doors, restroom partitions, Hadrian toilet partitions, and commercial bathroom stalls have a high number of average monthly searches and are relevant to https://asi-accuratepartitions.com/.

The Google Ads Keyword plan below for https://asistorage.com/ has three relevant terms, however, “ASI storage lockers” does not get many monthly searches and could be excluded from the keywords used on the page. Adding the terms “storage products” and “ASI locker” to the webpage description will potentially increase the page’s organic traffic by 2000 searches.

Part 2: Off-Site SEO

            Search engines determine a page’s quality, credibility, and popularity on the number of websites that link back to the page (Larson & Draper, 2020). Good content engages visitors and provides a mean to link the web page to other sites. Search engines view outside links as an endorsement from one website to another webpage. The website chooses webpage links that fit into the content and provide valuable information to its visitors (Larson & Draper, 2020). Two types of content that would be useful for the ASI Accurate Partitions company to create to help with its SEO is a blog and videos for the website. Blogs and videos are content that often appear in the top Google search results (Fishkin, 2016).  The website’s blog can feature engaging entries about current or past office remodeling or design projects. The revolving images on the pages are cluttered and confusing. The company can replace the carousel with videos that show the installation projects or before and after transformations to get visitors excited about these products. Other websites are more likely to share and link engaging videos and informative, interesting blog articles.

            Link roundups are blogs that frequently post quality content. Podcasts and blogs are good resources for backlinks (Dean, 2018). These sites are great backlink opportunities for websites. The following websites are a good fit for ASI Accurate Partitions to backlink:           

1. https://officesnapshots.com is a website featuring articles and photos about offices, office furniture products, innovative products, and wellness-related issues like creating a post-COVID workplace. The site features many other links to relevant websites. This is a great fit for ASI because linking to this website is a natural fit. Visitors can search the website for projects, brands, and firms.

2. https://foyr.com sells interior design software for professionals. This is an excellent backlink for ASI because the website features “best of” articles like “the best office designs” and other interior design content. This website will link some valuable consumers to ASI because the people accessing the Foyr site will likely design offices and have an interest in products that ASI offers like stylish cubicles and partitions.

3. https://www.workdesign.com is an online magazine that explore innovative and forward thinking office designs, trends, expert insights, and products. ASI’s cubicles are stylish and can fit into many different designs. The blogs often feature office design strategies, solutions, and collections. This website is an excellent backlink to promote the company’s products.

4. https://www.trendhunter.com features article about all kinds of trends including office design. This is a good back link for reaching visitors on more popular articles. The site also has annual and quarterly trend reports that would generate traffic if ASI met the criteria.  

5. https://www.creativebloq.com is a blog about art and design. The blog features several articles about trendy and innovative office designs that may draw younger creative professionals to the ASI website for office design products.

6. https://www.2020spaces.com is a blog that discusses office partitions and office design. The website features articles like “Collaborative Workspace Furniture for the Modern Office” and “office Partitions – How to Create Privacy in an open Office Space.” This website is an excellent backlink since these are the products that ASI sells and also this website’s target audience is similar to ASI’s potential customers.

7. https://www.outbackteambuilding.com is a website devoted to team building, training, and employee engagements which leads the website to elements of office design. This website had a podcast on “How Office Design Can Help Your team Work Better” in which colors and the pros of cubicles are discussed. This website is a good backlink match for ASI since office professionals will read or listen to this information and need links to find similar products.

8. https://www.decorilla.com is a design website that offers free design consultations. The website has articles about office design like “10 Best office Design Trends” and lots of pictures, so ASI could potentially get links to products or submit its images of its office projects to this website.

9. https://snacknation.com is a website that sells gifts for employees and corporate gifts. The website posts blogs related to the office and office design like “36 Office Décor Ideas to Revamp Your Workspace in 2021.” This website seems innovative and trendy and is a good place for ASI to reach a trendier demographic with its products.

10. https://ergonomicshealth.com is a great backlink for ASI. The site is focused on creating safer workplaces and features articles like “The Best Office Partition & Office Cubicles” and “Best Modern partition.” The articles discuss the practical, privacy, and safety features of different office furniture and explains the benefits and cons of each selected product. The article features direct links to products discussed also.

            If ASI Accurate Partitions corrects a few technical issues on its website, adds engaging content, uses relevant high-traffic keywords in its pages titles and descriptions, the SERP ranking will improve. An improved ranking will give ASI’s webpages a higher organic search and will match the web pages accurately so that the visitors find the information they are searching for ultimately improving visitors’ experiences and increasing the conversion rate.

References

Armstrong, M. (2021, August 6). How many websites are there? Statista. https://www.statista.com/chart/19058/number-of-websites-online/

Boostability. (n.d.). Report for ASI Group. Retrieved on August 07, 2021 at https://analysis.boostability.com/en_US/reports/asi-accuratepartitions.com#/Test_Page_AmpOptimised

Dean, B. (2018, January 23). How to get higher Google rankings [new checklist] [Video]. YouTube.

Dean, B. (2018, August 14). Link building: How to get powerful backlinks [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_838Dk966Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=aZCIbskIFkk&feature=emb_logo

Fishkin, R. (2016, December 9). The 10 types of content that work best for SEO—Whiteboard Friday [Blog post]. https://moz.com/blog/the-ten-types-of-content-that-work-best-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

Johnson, J. (2021, July 7). Number of explicit core search queries powered by search engines in the United States as of April 2021. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/265796/us-search-engines-ranked-by-number-of-core-searches/

Larson, J., & Draper, S. (2020). Digital marketing essentials. https://www.stukent.com/

 

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