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SEO is changing. It is evolving constantly to help users show better, more relevant search results to answer exactly what they need. The older SEO strategies are a thing of the past. It is not as effective as they once were in the world of the Semantic Web. The old SEO often just shows vague approximations of results that the user typed using keywords that often lead them nowhere. The relevance of the search results plays a big role in in the effectiveness and completes the circle of instruction that the user intended to know about.

Users mostly click the first search result in order to fulfil the thirst of their mind. But as we all know, the keywords play a big role in the operation. More often than not, the user is led to the wrong idealization when a bunch of words is dumped into the search bar. The page with the most relevant and synonymous keywords always wins this game but what about the user?

The role of SEO is to bridge the gap between the users, the pages and content. This plays a huge role, leading the users to conversion – the ultimate path that business owners would want their visitors to take. With this, digital marketers need to use a holistic and semantic approach to their SEO activities. Several factors have evolved, beyond what the traditional SEO used to operate on in the pre-semantic era of the search engine.

The following will try to dig more into the important factors on how to start a successful holistic SEO campaign.

1. Make a website designed for Holistic SEO

In an era where it takes only 300 milliseconds to get the information that you are looking for, the “build it and they will come” approach to a web design will not work anymore. As fast as the time changes, getting the attention of site visitors will get harder and harder as time moves along.

In website design, several critical factors should be considered by digital marketers to provide effective holistic SEO campaign to the site visitors to make sure that the brand achieve many positive feedbacks.  First impressions are a must to make sure that the site visitor will stay and explore the site. The effectiveness of the header and the first half of the page plays an important role in the holistic design. This gives out signals to the site visitors, enticing them to do further actions (look more into the website and explore other features). Design and content are inextricably linked as pointed out in the Psychology of content.

Other factors to an effective holistic website design are:

• Loading speed – Slow speeds kill conversions. An ideal time for a website to load is 2-5 seconds any more than that, the site visitors lose interest and redirect their focus on other websites.
• Site Speed – it reflects how fast a website responds to requests. Site visitors spend less time in slower sites, so it is important to speed a website response. Faster sites create happier visitors and will likely to visit the site again.
• Compatibility of the mobile internet browsing – compatibility of the browser is the method in which a website looks slightly different to some browsers or completely different to others. Every browser read websites differently, and because of that browsers render a website differently. In mobile browsers that rule also follows. Making sure that the website browser compatibility applies on both PC and mobile is a must to an effective holistic SEO.
• Responsive web design – the website should aim to be used by both mobile and pc users. One way to do both is to use a framework called Bootstrap. Bootstrap is a free and open-source CSS framework directed at responsive, mobile-first front-end web development. It contains CSS- and JavaScript-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation and other interface components. Bootstrap’s responsive CSS adjusts to phones, tablets, and desktops. Using bootstrap for a website will make the website browsing more comfortable for both mobile and pc users.

2. Maximise website engagement with holistic SEO

Website management is where the conversion takes place. The engagement of the visitors to the site plays a big factor to the effectiveness of the website. If the visitor likes the website and the website gives relevant and useful results, chances are the visitor will continue to use the website. The more satisfied the users, the more likely it will become a conversion.

Traditional SEO was found to be effective than email marketing. At a 14.6% closure rate of the traditional SEO vs. the 1.7% closure rate of the email marketing, SEO takes the lead. These numbers are expected to go higher and achieve greater success rate using the semantic web that requires the holistic SEO approach.

3. Creating On-Page Activities for Holistic SEO

Using on-page SEO activities will leave big impacts in semantic search, but these should be done from a holistic and semantic perspective. Although the technical side still matter, like title tag, sitemap, meta description, navigation, coding, and usability among others with the new ones coming like the Schema Mark-up tags, Open Graph Tags and Twitter Cards. The holistic approach will focus more on search intent, on what targeted customers will be looking for, expecting, or prefer to see once they visit a site. This is a continuous process that digital marketers should process in a continuous basis as part of a holistic SEO approach if they want to achieve success in their overall digital marketing campaign.

4. Link Building for Holistic SEO

Users click the links that they believe that will take them to the information that they are looking for.  70% of the time, the links clicked are organic, 18% of the organic clicks are generated by sites on the top position in the search results, 10% goes to the second site and 7% are for the third site.  Organic search results heavily rely on the popularity of the site.

However, link building and backlinks should be generated by using a holistic approach to focus more on attracting and getting links from high quality content websites that gives relevant information related to the website’s product or service.  Backlinks that are generated from whatever source available is a big risk to the website and it is a big NO to the world of semantic web. To add to that is the chance to be penalized by the search engines by hooking up with link farms and spam infested sites.

5. Social Media for Holistic SEO

Social Media nowadays leave a huge impression on modern people’s lives. It plays a significant role in influencing the way search results are perceived and delivered. It is also a relevant source of traffic and can greatly increase the company or brand’s credibility and social relevance in the semantic web.

Likes, comments and shares are all important factors that may influence search ranking in semantic search results. Viral content on these platforms generates tons of audience reach. So, this goes beyond merely propagating your site content on major social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. It tends to favour how your site is generating relevant, high-quality, and engaging content that people in social media will “talk” and buzz about in an overwhelmingly global basis.

6. Paid Advertising for Holistic SEO

The success of the holistic SEO campaign depends not only on the free and organic marketing tools but also on the paid channels as well. The effectiveness of the paid digital marketing tools can increase the audience and site visitor reach.  The mixing of organic SEO techniques with paid advertising (like PPC advertising) generates both organic traffic through SEO as well as highly targeted traffic with greater probabilities for conversion.

7. Content Marketing for Holistic SEO

Content marketing will play a very significant role in the success of a holistic SEO campaign. The opportunity for engaging with targeted audiences and potential customers is imperative with the high-quality content that the website provides. Without good content, all your SEO efforts will simply not be worth you time, and will generate very little if not zero engagement and positive results from targeted customers.

Overall, the main focus of your website should be the satisfaction of your targeted audience. It is always about their experience, so create a theme that you and the visitors can enjoy. Choose a topic that the targeted customers can find interesting or important particularly if it caters to answering a particular need. On top of that, content should be fresh and regularly updated if you want to generate the kind of engagement and positive results from your targeted audiences. Success in your holistic SEO campaign will rely heavily on delivering a good, memorable and engaging user experience with targeted customers.

Whether you’re a start-up business or an established enterprises trying to gain greater mileage in the world of the semantic web, you will need a perfect SEO strategy to generate the kind of results you want and need – and you can do so through the holistic SEO approach.

The Elephant in the Boardroom team offers premium holistic and semantic SEO services for your business so that you can easily be discovered on Google by your hungriest prospective customers and clients. Visit the Elephant in the Boardroom for more information.