SEO Time Management: Got an Hour?

In the time it takes you to do these things at the office you could have already facilitated the set-up for HitTail:

Check your daily email and voicemail messages
Perform weekly website updates
Attend the weekly staff meeting
Prepare social media posts
Eat lunch and socialize at the water cooler

So, what is HitTail? We talked about it previously here, but, in summary, it is a service that helps businesses increase their website search traffic by pinpointing the keywords people use to find the company. For example, did they find your men’s custom tailoring shop by searching for “tailors,” “custom tailors” or “custom tailors for men in Chicago.” HitTail’s SEO methods will analyze the data, provide suggestions based on the long-tail keywords and allow you to create content based on real data and guide your back-end marketing based on the results.

And it only takes about an hour to set up – a real selling point in our book. This article by Ashkay Hallur, How to Do Long-Tail Keyword Research for SEO gives an alternative do-it-yourself method:

Find a topic to blog upon
Put the base keyword in Google search
Go for UberSuggest
Analyze the competition for the keywords
Optimize the blog post for the keyword

Source: GoBloggingTips

It could be effective for sure, but does a small business really have time for this? Doubtful. In addition, it requires expertise, while not impossible to learn, might be intimidating for the everyday, multi-tasking employee.

There is another substantial advantage to HitTail we like after testing it for just a short period. The information is in a format we can understand. So that means no numbers of unknown origin, no indecipherable gobbledygook and no more “not provided” keyword messages. What good is data that people don’t use or understand? Not much, according to this Harvard University professor.

Big Data Is Not About the Data!

(Presentation from Gary King, Harvard University, about how the real value of Big Data is in the analytics)

Long-term our interest in HitTail is also to create better content that our partners, friends and potential clients can enjoy and find on the crowded Internet superhighway.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to increase web traffic and in turn generate new business. Moreover, while we are trying the subscription-based service courtesy of HitTail, it is still early in our testing phase, so we will continue to provide updates of our experience.

Leisa Chester Weir