SEO—short for search engine optimization—is the process of improving your ranking in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! you can accomplish this by increasing the amount of traffic that visits your website and the amount of traffic that engages with your website. There are many different techniques that you can use to increase your website’s exposure on search engines, but these tips will give you the best results while keeping both your rankings and your budgets high.
The Keywords You Are Ranking For
The best place to start your SEO strategy is by making sure you are already ranking for what you want people to find you for. If a search engine doesn’t return any of your pages, it can’t send traffic either! So make sure you know exactly what keywords and phrases people are using when they search. Look at how well other sites are ranking and then research what keywords they are using. Then analyze whether or not it makes sense for you to use those same keywords. As a rule of thumb, if other sites aren’t ranking for them then don’t worry about optimizing for them either as there just isn’t enough demand.
Creating Great Content
Because Google favours sites with great content, it’s important to have good, relevant content on your site. The key is making a site that people want to link to and share—content is king! If people find a site valuable or entertaining, they’ll link back and bring even more people. If they don’t enjoy what they see, they won’t (and you won’t get any traction or growth). Make sure all of your pages are well-written and interesting—don’t just write for search engines. Write for readers!
Engaging Call To Actions
When you publish a new piece of content, try driving clicks and engagement with a call-to-action (CTA). The most common types of CTA are headlines that include words like click here or pictures with arrows that point users in a certain direction. Make sure your CTA includes an imperative verb, such as add to cart or find out more. These directives encourage users to take action by reminding them what they can do next, ultimately resulting in more conversions.
Do Not Neglect User Experience
Designing a site that people can navigate easily and enjoyably is an important step toward a good user experience. While keyword density is useful, if it degrades usability, then it’s doing more harm than good. Always keep users in mind first when creating a page. If they have a poor experience, you risk them leaving or not buying anything from you—neither of which is good for business.
Engage with All Platforms
Social media is a fabulous way to build rapport with potential customers and find them when they’re searching for information. However, it’s just one way of reaching them. A combination of search engine optimization (SEO), social media, email marketing, and content marketing will reach as many people as possible, so don’t neglect anything to do too much. Most importantly: Listen! Make sure you have a presence on all major platforms.
Test and Iterate
Once you have a firm grasp of what people like about your site, you can use that information to inform future iterations of your content. If no one’s clicking on a certain headline, consider removing it or making it less prominent. Do users respond better to photos or text? You might want to experiment with both in future posts and see which delivers more results.
Never Stop Improving
If you want to win in business, especially online, it’s important to never stop learning. For example, mastering social media marketing can be hard when you’re first starting. But if you take things one stage at a time and create a clear strategy for yourself, it will only get easier. Not only that, but you can use sites like YouTube or Quora to find tutorials on how others succeed in digital marketing. There are also dozens of other blogs about digital marketing; reading some of them now and then will help keep you on top of industry trends. To ensure that you stay up to date with all of these trends (and more), I recommend using Feedly or Feedspot.
