Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a complicated online strategy that involves a lot of interrelated parts. There may be confusion but don’t fret, clarifications can be made.
If you are new to SEO, it may be hard to understand at first, and you may find yourself just focusing on plain and simple marketing campaigns. However, with a well-established and systematic SEO, method can usually have a positive impact on the online presence of a business, especially if it’s done right.
You might be wondering as to how sure is this strategy going to help you build your presence on the Internet and allow your clients to find you instantly whenever they look for you.
Is there by any chance the best way to stay on top of your competitors in the web?
You can answer these questions if you make sure that your SEO strategy has the nine elements that we are going to discuss right now. You will definitely see a positive impact on your businesses in just a short amount of time.
Here are your 9 Must-Have Elements in SEO to help you defeat your competitors.
#1: An SEO Audit Needs To Be Completed
You need to know the current status of your website. You cannot just measure your improvements in SEO ranking if you don’t even know where you should begin.
Site Audit is a crucial element since it helps in establishing a starting point and to recognize the specific areas that need improvement.
A site audit can help you understand your SEO positions on the following details:
- Your website design’s user friendliness, reliability and navigation.
- It can identify any issues relating to the page speed or why your page takes time to load.
Auditing your site can also double-check the following:
- It makes sure that the links are functioning properly and that the users are sent to land on the correct page.
- It checks how well your chosen keywords are performing in SERPs or Search Engine Results Pages.
- You will see if the content of your website is optimized to get improved conversions.
Doing an audit to your website is a good way since you will know both the strong and weak points. You will know which ones need to be maintained or improved on.
#2: Choosing The Right Keywords Is Crucial
Identifying the keywords for your potential market is not a complicated process. These are terms and phrases that are being used by your customers to look for a certain product, service or helpful information online.
To help you choose the appropriate keywords, you need to base it on these factors:
- Relevance – it should be related to what your business is all about.
- Demand – you need to know how often these words or phrases are used by a searcher.
- Competition – General terms are harder to use when competing against the competitors on the web. You need to be specific but relevant. Check your competitors and find out what are the keywords they are using. You don’t need to copy; you just have to construct it better.
Think about the keywords that your potential market might be using to search on the web. Use words that have lesser competition and target those terms. It’s easier and faster to achieve rankings this way. Make sure that you include a mix of local, short tail and long tail keywords.
Local search keywords are helpful so that your local clients can find you by targeting and including the phrases ‘near me’ or the location in your keyword.
Search phrases that have 3 to 5 words are considered as long tail keywords. Short tail keywords, on the other hand, are less precise and generally consist of not more than 2 words. The search rates for short tail keywords are higher, but the competition is tighter.
Make use of keywords that you can optimize for voice search. There has been a continued increase in searches done through the voice assistant. The keywords here may vary since the way users speak and type differs. When typing, the phrases may be shorter and voice search may be longer.
For example: a user may type ‘japanese restaurant’ in the search bar, but this may change to “the best Japanese restaurant near me” when using a voice assistant. Now, that’s a huge difference.
As you can see, voice search terms are often comprised of long tail keywords through a question format through the use of natural language.
#3: A Well-Constructed Content
What makes up a great and effective SEO campaign is having a well-structured content and an on-page SEO that is fully optimized. Your website contains content such as blogs with keywords that your potential market is using in search engines. Below are the reasons why a content can provide value to the visitors:
- You are educating your web page visitors on a certain topic.
- Your content can answer the user’s question.
- You can provide a solution to their problem.
- You give them another helpful information about a certain product, service or upcoming events.
Having a great content can improve your SEO rankings, especially if your content is shared all over the Internet. When you construct your content, make sure it’s appealing and engaging so that your visitors will want to stay longer in your website.
#4: A Mobile-Friendly Website
Smart phones and other similar gadgets are considered “must-haves” these days. According to a recent study, it has been predicted that by year 2020, smart phone users will exceed to 4.7 billion. Even today, people don’t need to access their desktop computers just to search for something on the Internet.
If your website is not optimized yet for mobile phones, then you better start doing it today. Statistics show that more than half of the web traffic all over the world comes from mobile devices. Your potential market could be using one too.
Google’s algorithm has focused on mobile-friendly query results. Because of this, you need to take note of the following details below:
- The response time of your mobile should be quick.
- Make sure that the text format of your website can adjust in smaller screen sizes (mobile-responsive).
- The images will not affect your site’s responsiveness.
If Google sees that your site is indeed mobile-friendly, you can expect that it will definitely have a positive impact on your ranking.
#5: Solid Backlinks
Backlinks are links that redirects users from other website to your page. Based on Google’s algorithms, it can have a positive impact on your rankings if it’s from a reliable source, at the same time resulting in a boost in your page authority at the same time. It’s works the same when you add links to your page’s content that also redirects back to an outside credible source that’s relevant to your content.
Another part of your SEO strategy is to create backlinks that are mutually beneficial by reaching out to sites that have authority and create a good partnership. This can drive traffic and boost rankings too.
A site crawl should be done on your website regularly too. This can tell you whether your website is free from any broken links. Make sure you don’t have any as this can affect your site’s performance and it can have a negative impact on your page.
#6: Your Website Should Have SSL Certificate
Cyber security is a main concern of all customers. There have been instances of businesses being hacked and all the crucial data was compromised, and you don’t want this to happen to you.
A secure website will cross out hesitations of clients to visit your site. Google will penalize SERP rankings of those that do not take actions in ensuring that clients are protected.
SSL or Secure Sockets Layer is another must-have for all business owners with websites to ensure your SEO strategy is not missing any step. If your business is collecting sensitive info on the web such as credit card information and passwords, then you don’t want to miss this element.
Here are the different benefits of having SSL:
- Additional points to trustworthiness of the website.
- You’re telling search engines and clients that you have a legitimate website.
- Customers will have peace of mind because they know that their information is safe. With this, they know they can trust your website and continue with the transaction.
#7: Utilize Schema Markups
Schema Markups is one of the most powerful means to have your website optimized. It’s a script that are inserted in your site. It helps the search engines in delivering the best information to the users in the search results.
It can give you the edge over your competitors if your potential market sees the name of your business and most especially the information that they are looking for.
#8: URLs Are SEO-Friendly
Your URL contains a lot of stored information even in its simple form. Remember, if your URL is too long with a lot of random numbers or letters, this may be perceived as a suspicious URL and this can hurt your ratings in ranking. This will discourage your potential clients from checking out your site too.
The first step in this element is to compose a URL that can easily be read, and the reader should have an idea what the content might be about when they land on the page. Don’t include any strange characters, symbols or numbers that don’t have any purpose.
One good SEO practice is incorporating the target keywords that you have into your URL. However, you need to take note that less is more, which means you don’t need to stuff in each of the terms in the URL. Spammy URLs won’t do you any good.
The format of your URL should be short and precise. The ideal length is 50 to 60 characters, this way you won’t be overwhelming your reader, and this is enough for you to express enough details.
#9: Your Progress Should Be Tracked
Paying attention to your business’ progress is a must. This last element is also crucial. No matter how long your SEO takes; you need to keep on tracking your progress.
Being consistent in keeping a progress report is an obligation for you to have full control over your SEO methods. There are many helpful tools that you can use to monitor the ups and downs of your SEO efforts. Using those tools will help you on the following:
- Continuously get an update on the improvement of your rankings on the keywords you are targeting.
- See the ups and downs of your website traffic.
- You can see the comparison of your web presence against your competitors
- You will see which contents of your website are performing well. You can use this for more enhancement.
You need to have your detailed analytics so that you can continue to enhance your SEO strategy. Doing so can help in avoiding mistakes, and you can minimize unwanted costs by identifying and solving the issues at an early stage.
This information is a must-have for your business. Talk to an SEO expert to help you understand the process of SEO.
