About

Foundational Elements

Why SEO & UXD Are Our Foundation

Search engine optimization is a series of activities that work to maximize website traffic from a particular audience. The goal is to have your website appear higher on a list of results offered by a search engine, like Google.

For companies selling products or services, the most valuable traffic is from people who are on a path to purchasing. Therefore, the most valuable visitors are those who have intent to buy.

While Google doesn’t tell you how to have your website show up above your competitors, there are researchers, analysts, and tools that can help you evaluate what search engines “want”. Fundamentally, they want to match what searchers are looking for with the most relevant and trustworthy results. Why? Because Google wants you to keep using the search tool so they can sell ads and harvest data to potentially resell. It’s in their best interest to only select good websites so that you, as a user, don’t abandon your search or use a different search engine.

STRATAC relies on the feedback from experts and paid tools to aggregate organic and paid traffic data about you and your competitors to form recommendations for content development and business positioning.

If we are successful in identifying which terms, content types, and user experiences are being rewarded with high rankings on Google, we can help you compete for those top spots. We apply our own research and qualitative evaluation of what is working well for others to help you determine what you need to say and do to take away the attention and position from your competitors.

Once we are able to establish what will work well in search, we apply marketing best practices and psychology to ensure we are creating positive interactions and experiences – which at its core is dependent on you having strong product/service, operations and people.

At STRATAC, we use SEO to sell. But selling isn’t just advertising. In today’s marketplace, people have access to information at an unprecedented volume. So, before someone buys something – they go through stages.

The 4 stages of buying include:

  1. Problem or need recognition: identifying that a product or service can solve present or future pain/discomfort/pleasure both from internal and external stimuli.
  2. Education: seeking information – delving into internal searches (what made me happy, offered relief) and external searches (what are others doing to solve the problem or need).
  3. Comparison and evaluation: exploration of pros and cons that deliver the resolution or benefit they are seeking as well as alternatives.
  4. Purchasing: choosing something based on price, terms, experience, awareness, ease, safety.