One of the principles that guides the structure of our content management system is that you have to get found if you’re going to make an impact, regardless of the type of content.

The content on our site that gets updated regularly (as opposed to pages such as About or Services) falls under three main categories: blog posts, job listings and case studies.

Case studies let us show potential new clients what we can do, blog posts give us a chance to dig deeper into the ideas that guide our work, and job listings help us find talented new collaborators. To really be successful, all of them need to reach an audience beyond the people who already know about us.

This means the first order of business is a solid SEO foundation. For us, that means a dedicated, enforceable SEO component on every post.

How do we do it?

According to a 2019 study by SEO platform BrightEdge, 53% of all website traffic comes from search. The company concluded that search drives more than 1,000% (yes, that says ONE THOUSAND percent) more traffic than social media. That means everything on your website should be designed not only for social sharing, but also for searchability.

Our SEO component does both. Every time I log in to our site and click New Blog, a window opens up asking for an image to lead the post (high-quality images are so important!), an image that appears every time the post is shared, categories, post title, alt text and meta description. Only when all of these fields are filled out can I click Save and begin writing my post.

This information is injected automagically into the metadata for my post. No further action is needed on my part.

It’s simple, doable and effective. And just as important, unlike methods such as the Yoast plugin for Wordpress, it’s required. I couldn’t skip it if I wanted to.

How does it benefit you?

We know that scaling a business relies on thorough, simple and repeatable systems, and enforcing a consistent pattern of SEO on every piece of content you post to your website is one crucial system.

Our method takes the guesswork out of SEO planning. Once the structure is in place, it’s one less thing you have to think about every time you go to create a new piece of content. It becomes a habit.

In addition to enforcing the concrete steps you need to take to ensure your content will be found, it also ensures you do your homework before starting any post. To write a top-notch meta description you need to know from the beginning who you’re trying to reach and what your main keywords are, and you need to be super clear on your topic.

SEO as a concept can feel nebulous and unwieldy. Some of it is pretty concrete (the site we build for you will have schema markup right in the code telling Google your name, your industry and your contact info) but a lot of it is much less so (frequency of content, consistency of messaging, shifting keyword search metrics). All the more reason to start out with a simple, solid foundation for all your SEO endeavours.