It’s no secret that the world of SEO is moving towards the social arena. Google’s latest round of algorithm updates in March sent clear signals of this and in their focus of Google+. But while many big brands still have trouble with old-school SEO techniques, they should be wary in jumping ahead into modern SEO as a recent exercise showed the incredible value in getting the basics right. Here’s how I was able to double organic web traffic and sales overnight.

1. Mapping of meta tags

In January week 2 2012, I took the top 10 most-viewed pages in Google Analaytics and using Excel I mapped out title tags, meta description and headers. What I found was that over the course of the last two years, these tags had not been updated and we were using non user-friendly company lingo! My first action was to create user-friendly meta tags and remove meta keywords.

This approach made it very simple in updating the website and by focusing on the top 10 pages, we made sure we were not wasting development time.

Example of spreadsheet

2. On page optimization

Having mapped out the metag tags, the next step was to choose a keyword on each of the top 10 pages we wanted to rank for. Using SEOmoz report card, we took the URL’s and graded each webpage. We started out at 80% grade C and below so a lot of improvements were required in order to rank effectively. SEOmoz make it easy with suggestions, and SEO beginner’s are able to quickly understand what improvements are to be made.

Example of on page optimization

By tracking the original grade and number of improvements, we were able to view our progress. We now look forward to each Monday when SEOmoz publish our latest ranking reports!

3. Guest blogging

The final step was to start guest blogging on industry sites. We didn’t go overboard (no pun intended), and within the same week we produced four relevant blog posts, spread between three colleagues. We found the guest blog requests through Catch Stucker’s Blogger Link Up. We filtered through to the more authoritive domains and by spending 3-4 hours each, we were able to write four guest blogs.

4. Submit Sitemap/ RSS feed to Webmaster Tools

One of the most overlooked, yet possibly easiest things to do for SEO was to submit our sitemap and RSS feed to Google Webmaster Tools. Submitting took less than a minute and with webmaster tools latest release, you can now add/ test sitemaps and immediately find any issues.

Organic traffic and sales increased by more than 200%

By using Google Analytics and SEOmoz, the total time spent on these improvements was less than a day’s work (8.5 hours) yet the results are priceless.

Organic traffic chart by week

Organic traffic sales chart by week

By applying the above tactics, we were able to increase organic traffic by 225%. In terms of sales, organic traffic has a significant impact on our bottom line and sales from organic search increased by 450%.

Our focus now will be to optimze the next 10 viewed pages (11-20), create unique and awesome content for blogs and continue to write user-friendly copy on our site. The take away is that Google will always make updates to its algorithms but if you focus on the basics, you really have nothing to worry about.

Do you have any success stories when it comes to fixing the SEO basics? Share your suggestions in the comments below