You know you can compare a lot of SEO techniques and efforts to a steamy juicy off the grill hamburger. If you are a vegetarian I truly apologize but these I think are the most important elements of a complete search engine optimization campaign and ironically I have compared those elements to a hamburger.

Let’s go over what I mean about the various stages of the SEO Burger:

Bottom Bun

The bottom bun of the SEO hamburger represents your on-site optimization efforts. This portion of the project really acts as the foundation of all your future marketing efforts. Get this step wrong and it is like cutting corners on your foundation when building a home. Each section of your individual web pages should always be 100% optimized. That means custom written meta tags along with descriptions, targeted keywords per page specific to the content, along with optimized image tags are all very important for all these searches being conducted each and every day.

The Meat

You can’t expect to grow a business without having a little bit of meat and substance in the equation. Building inbound links will be an important part. If you were grilling a nice juicy hamburger you wouldn’t just throw it out there to cook you would most likely season it with your best spices & flavors. An SEO campaign goes through the same process.

You have to be robust with your approach and always keep your brand in check. An SEO campaign that lacks any branding efforts is not much of a marketing campaign, is it? You do realize that search engine optimization is simply the process of marketing your business right? Things like newsworthy press releases, industry expert articles, heavy social media, and consistent email marketing all help with the overall SEO picture. The days of just hammering away at keywords on your website are long gone. There is a whole new game in town and if you don’t want to utilize the tools around you will not last long online.

Sauce

Your business along with your marketing approach needs to have some personality. You don’t want to be this boring company that makes it obvious that there is no room to have fun and grow a successful business at the same time. Personality is also what will allow you to stand out from your crowd. If you have a great deal of competition around you what is going to set you apart from yourself and your competitors? Back your logo with a soul and watch your website grow in a whole new light. Company personality increases customer retention. This type of retention can also help bring natural inbound SEO links pointing to your website. You want those to happen.

Lettuce

Don’t forget about the lettuce because everything is an ingredient in the overall SEO picture. The bigger picture of your website growth requires many different gears to be spinning at the same time. This means that a consistent email marketing approach along with PPC  marketing and things like affiliate marketing will be vital to the success of your company’s online approach. Don’t find one technique and beat it into the ground. The lettuce is the filler that allows you to strengthen your approach. Your digital marketing campaign should always be multi-pronged.

The Onion

This is probably one of my favorites. Social media marketing is probably one of the most important efforts you can apply to your business. The onion fits this diagram nicely because if you abuse your audience in the social networks you could quickly have a sour taste in not only your mouth but also their mouths. It is important to take a well rounded and structured approach to your social media and always include personality. People always ask what is the secret sauce to internet marketing? there is no secret sauce just try having some sort of personality with every piece of marketing.

The Top Bun

The top bun is often overlooked. I see it many times, a company will spend a great deal of money marketing their business with little to no website conversion elements in place. I’m not talking about high end design although up-to-date design is always important but elements like lead forms and visible phone numbers are extremely important. What good is all that web traffic if you can’t convert any of those visitors from a lack of conversion aspects? Website structure and layout are important to the overall success of your external marketing efforts so don’t forget about them.