In today’s modern world, businesses are finding ways on boosting their online presence. Without a single doubt, SEO is one of the most preferred ways in improving the ranking position on search engine results pages such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. Since Google has the biggest market share in the Internet, this is where you want your business to shine above all your competitors, and you need to exert a lot of effort for this.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing, long term commitment. You need to plan your strategies to use your time and resources wisely. Gaining traffic via SEO is not as easy as writing and publishing your blog in just a day.
If you are looking for ways on how you can boost your new or existing website, below are four simple steps that you can follow.
Step 1: Performing Keyword Research
This is the first and most critical step if you want to get found on Google’s results page. Keyword research will help you to identify the keywords and phrases that your potential clients will use to find businesses with similar products and services. It can be a short or general keyword or even long-tail keywords that have more specific phrases.
This step needs focus and time, and you don’t want to hasten the process of doing it. You need to find the perfect and relevant keywords that can bring traffic to your website.
Brainstorm For ideas
You need to think of terms and phrases that are most relevant to your website, business, brand, products or services. What are the best keywords that could boost traffic to your site?
If you have a team, gather them and brainstorm for ideas, think creatively on the words that your potential clients might use to search for you on the web. List down a combination of short and long-tail keywords. List down as much as you can, as not all of them will make it through the next round of selection but the at least you’ll make a good start.
Start Developing Your Keyword List
After this, you can now start expanding or developing the list of keywords that you have. Here’s a list of methods that you can apply when doing this part:
- Localize the list of keywords that you have – Add location or city info together with your keywords, especially if your target market is in a specific geographic place.
- Check on searches that are similar with your keywords – At the bottom of Google’s search engine results pages, you will see a list of similar searches whenever you try to search for something on Google. Check them out and see if there’s anything relevant to your brand.
- Make use of Google suggest – Google gives you suggestions when you start typing words in the search bar, you can incorporate these suggested terms and phrases to your keywords.
- See your competitor’s keywords – This is a good way to expand your list by checking the keywords that they are ranking for. You can also incorporate those terms with your list.
Learn About Keyword Difficulty & Volume
Here, you’ll have to do some digging to know which of your keywords best fits your business. You can use Google Keyword Planner to see the monthly search volume of the terms on your keywords list.
Reduce keywords On Your List By Narrowing It Down
Since you’ve seen the movement of the monthly search volume of your keywords, take out the keywords that are not really that relevant to your business to avoid any negative effect on your conversion rate.
Now, pinpoint the keywords that you think might be potential to use for ranking.
It is recommended to use the keywords that have high volume in search but low in difficulty. Is your competitor ranking for those keywords too? Is it worth going after those terms and phrases? Will it push you for a better spot in ranking? Or will it give you a hard time to rank because of strong competition? This is why it’s very important not to hasten keyword research.
Step 2: Create Content That You Can Optimize For Search Engines
It’s crucial to create contents that you can optimize in search engines. Make sure to emphasize the keywords that you have in your list within your content. It should be relevant and useful at the same time. The keywords are then crawled by search engines so that they can find it and be able to show your content in search results for the users.
Content is one of the factors of on-page SEO. One of Google’s top three ranking factors includes content, which is why you need to invest on creating and publishing only high quality and great content regularly.
SEO and content marketing are a perfect combination in digital marketing. If you want to fuel your digital marketing promotions, content marketing plays a huge part in that, and it’s crucial in SEO too. Your content should be educating and enticing to read at the same time.
Let’s talk more about great content in the viewpoint of SEO. Here are the following common characteristics of a content that is optimized in search engines.
It Is Usually Long-Form – There’s nothing wrong in writing shorter content blogs, but it has been observed that most of the top results in search engines are actually more than 1,000 words. These posts are not just helpful and comprehensive; it can get the reader’s full attention and let them keep on reading for a longer period of time. Because of this, their SEO results and the visitor’s time spent on page increased.
It Is Fresh – Google likes updated content and so as the web visitors. Top ranking sites regularly post fresh and relevant content. It’s crucial to be consistent in updating your site’s content, especially your older posts that are performing well to help them rank continuously.
It’s Readable – Not all users have the capacity to understand deep words and sentences so make sure to construct your content that’s easy for them to read and comprehend. Use headings as well as bullet points to boost the value of your SEO.
Your Keyword Is Rich Organically – Keyword stuffing is a big no-no! Put them in naturally all over the content, and don’t make it sound like it’s forced just to have a keyword in there.
Another thing you need to give attention is the formatting of your content. It has an impact on how search engines can easily find and understand your content.
In the beginning, the first 100 words of your site page or blog post, it should have keywords in there and include them in the opening part of your title.
And, use the keywords in a strategic manner so that Google will find your content. At least one of your H2 headings parts, the description, URL and Meta tags should have keywords too. Keywords are also needed in the alt text, image titles as well as caption only when it’s suitable.
Step 3: Work On Elements Of Your Off-Page SEO
Aside from publishing numerous great contents, you need to support them with off-page SEO to avoid putting all your efforts into waste. The work here involves off-page optimization. Off-page optimization is what you do externally, by driving awareness and referral traffic to your site from other websites such as link building, guest blogging and through social media.
The links that go back to your content from other sites are called backlinks. Off-page SEO optimization helps in boosting that needed traffic back to your website while establishing good-quality backlinks at the same time. This is one of the ranking factor of Google since it can attest the quality of content you are producing.
One of the indicators that your content is of high quality, and that it’s useful at the same time is when other relevant and reputable websites link back to your content.
Here are effective activities that you can do to boost quality backlinks and rankings in SERP at the same time:
You Can Share Your Content All Over Social Media – Social media channel is a great opportunity for you to share your content. This can reach out to new clients and even get more backlinks to your content.
Writing For Guest Blog Posts – You can write guest blog posts for other websites since it’s a good opportunity for you to magnify your reach and allow more backlinks. Look for publications and blog posts that are relevant and allows guest posts on certain useful topics for your target audience.
To avoid getting rejected, be sure to check out their guidelines. If you don’t see any guide for guest posting, you can send them a short email about it. Also, do memember to link your site in the guest post as well.
Connect With Influencers – The influencers that are within your industry usually have a huge number of followers. Build a good relationship with them and engage with their content too. Doing so will give you a good chance to have your content shared with their audience or even backlink to your site’s content.
Leaving Comments On Other People’s Blogs – Engaging with other blogs is another opportunity for you to boost your site’s traffic. Drop your links in the comment box but only when it’s appropriate. Avoid leaving bad or spammy comments to avoid getting blocked out.
Interact With Online Communities – Online communities include private slack channels, chat forums, LinkedIn groups, etc. You can meet other people here that belong in your industry and they may also benefit from your business. Share your links in these groups while building your authority at the same time.
Have Your Content Repurposed In Videos – Doing so can entice attention to your page’s content. Upload videos in YouTube. Don’t forget to add a CTA in the video that links back to your website.
Step 4: Always Monitor & Test
Change is constant, likewise for SEO. It’s like whenever you’ve got things going with your SEO method, Google will suddenly change its algorithm, putting everyone surprised. This is why it’s very important to keep yourselves updated with the latest changes in SEO so that you can make the needed modifications to meet the demands of the new practices and strategies.
The keywords that are being used by your clients may also change. You need to be consistent in analyzing your web traffic too and then compare the movement of the keywords in its driven traffic.
If your ranking position in search engines has dropped, you should investigate and look for the reasons behind it. Make a checklist of the best practices of SEO to always stay updated with its latest trends.
Use the data when you started your SEO method. Continue to monitor the results and apply appropriate changes if needed. Always keep track of what you have been doing that has impacted your SEO performance.
If you want to implement a new strategy, check the different kinds of content that best resonates with your target market.
To know which of the elements of the content has an impact in your web traffic and SEO, you can do the A/B test. You begin by using a control piece of content, and then you make a variation that is similar to the control but changing one to two elements in it.
You now then have the pieces of content tested to identify which ones resonate best with your potential clients.
A/B testing will help you find and try different kinds of SEO schemes to learn on which elements that are in your content perform well. However, running tests is not enough. You have to gather the data from the tests that you have performed; you should analyze and compare them.
From there, you’ll be able to get new ideas from the testing you’ve done and apply it to improve your site’s performance and increase ROI of your business at the same time.
Seek Experts For Help
SEO is indeed worth your effort, money and time, but it’s not something that can easily be done by one person. Talk to experts on this matter, they mostly have a team to help you out on this. They are experienced and are brilliant in finding the right SEO strategy to use for your business for you to be found on Google in no time.
