One of the most valuable assets you have is your website. It’s what people look to when they want to learn about your business, but it doesn’t just magically rank itself on Google. You have to take some time and put in a lot of work if you want your site to be successful– that is SEO.
SEO is a key integral part of driving traffic to your website, but it’s often an afterthought for many small business owners. It doesn’t have to be that way. With the right SEO strategy in place, you can quickly grow your site’s organic search results and see long-term gains.
Today, we will explore how to create a killer SEO strategy for your site. Many different components comprise a successful SEO strategy and with a little research, you’ll be able to come up with the perfect plan that fits your company’s needs. Let’s get started!
Do your research.
Some of the best SEO strategies take months, if not years to develop, so you need to ensure you do your research before beginning an SEO campaign for your website.
– Who is ranking in the top ten results?
– What are they doing differently than you?
– How can you fix any problems you have?
– How can you improve the content on your site so that people will want to link back to it or rank it higher?
The answers to these questions are crucial if you want your website to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.
Identify your target audience.
There are different tools you can use to find out the demographics of your audience. Some great examples include Quantcast, Compete, and Alexa (to name a few). Once you determine your target audience, you can tailor your site to meet their needs. You need to provide them with useful and actionable content if you want them to view your site often and recommend it to friends.
You’ll also need to identify where these people are located. Developing a local SEO strategy allows you to target a specific geographic region and can lead to a lot of success in gaining targeted, relevant traffic.
Take advantage of the tools available.
There are loads of free SEO tools available on the Internet and it’s completely free to use. You can get started quickly and be successful even faster with all that’s at your disposal.
– Google Webmaster Tools: This is an invaluable resource to any online company. It shows you how people are finding your site (and if they’re coming from a search engine, it will have the keywords used to find your site) and technical difficulties users have been experiencing.
– Google Analytics: This is another free tool that tracks your website’s performance over time. You can see how much traffic you’re getting, where it’s coming from (directly or via search), and what people are clicking on when they come to your website.
– Google Trends: This tool shows you what people are typing into the search engine and how those terms change over time. The more you know about popular topics, the better off you’ll write content that people will find and link to.
Determine the keywords they would search for to find your site.
Keywords are the cornerstone of your SEO strategy. It’s how people find you on search engines (and it’s what you’re optimizing for), but you need to make sure that you narrow down the keywords that actually matter. You can do this by using Google Trends or other free tools available online, but the most important thing is to figure out:
– How people are searching for what you offer (i.e., “organic dog food”)
– What volume of searches there is (if it’s too low, then writing articles on this topic may not be worth your time)
– How difficult will it be to rank for the keyword (is your site strong enough yet?)
Build links to your site.
To get noticed by search engines, you need to build links back to your website from other sites on the Internet (the more quality the sites, the better). But you can’t just go and create a bunch of links to your website willy-nilly.
You have to be as white hat as possible and build those links organically. Some of the best practices to do this include writing articles that other sites will want to link back to, commenting on blog posts, and adding valuable insights for readers.
Create content that is relevant and informative but also engaging
This step cannot be overstated. If you want to get ahead of your competition and reach the top ten, you need to produce content that’s informative, entertaining, and well-written. It has to grab readers’ attention while providing them with a solution they’re looking for. No one wants to link back to something boring.
It doesn’t matter how great your site is if you don’t have content people want to read. So, it would help if you wrote articles on relevant and informative topics for your audience while also being engaging. You can ask questions at the end of your content or even add a quote from one of your clients to add an extra level of interest.
Don’t be afraid to update your website with new content. People are a character of habit, so if they visit your site one day and see new content on it versus the old stale stuff, they may come back again another time or pass that link along to friends who need what you have to offer.
Optimize the type of content you publish on your blog (images, videos, infographics)
It’s not just the words on your website that matter for SEO purposes. In fact, there are tons of opportunities online to add additional content through images and videos. The more you know about visual content, the better off you’ll be when it comes to producing quality material that will rank high in search results.
If you don’t have your own visual content, you may search for free video resources directly from the web. For example, the platforms Pixabay, Mixkit, and VEED have thousands of stock videos that can be reused to spruce up your website or blog. This allows you to get more of a multimedia presence and diversify the type of content that’s on your site.
You know what’s more important than the number of people who view your content? The amount of people that share it. By promoting your blog posts through social media, you’ll not only bring in new visitors, but you may also get these visitors to register on your site if they like what they see (which is why it’s important to make sure that your content is high quality).
Don’t get discouraged if your posts don’t go viral right away. In fact, you should expect to have a few articles that flop at the beginning. But stick with it and see how things play out over time because eventually, people will take notice. The ones who do this are likely to be of high quality.
Utilize Google Analytics to track traffic sources and measure the success of SEO strategy
If you want to optimize the results of your SEO efforts, then Google Analytics is an invaluable resource. You can use it to see how many people are arriving on your site through search engines and social media channels. If you’d like to know which keywords they used to get there specifically, you can also go into the “Keywords” section of Google Analytics and see what people are typing in to find you.
Make sure that your site is mobile-friendly for Google users
Your website can be optimized, but if it’s not properly formatted for mobile devices, then it won’t show up on the page one of Google results. This is yet another way that search engine optimization can help boost the amount of traffic you get to your site. Just make sure that your mobile version is top-notch so that it can stay up there with the rest of the competition.
That’s my list for now. Keeping up with all the different SEO strategies can be troublesome, so we’ve got you covered. With the right knowledge, you can make it happen. Of course, this takes time because SEO isn’t easy when everyone else is learning the same information too. Keep trying and be patient with yourself while your competition catches up. If you keep these tips in mind, you’ll be able to make a name for yourself and reach the top of search results.