Search engines perform best when they find companies with the right content, in the right form and at the right time. Writing helpful articles can help you achieve all three. Blogging is a great way to establish your site as an authority in any niche. Just like your regular website, search engines rank blogs based on both quantity and quality of content. With the exponential growth of content and web pages on the internet, search engines have become more sophisticated and are getting harder to fool. You can no longer simply stuff keywords onto your page and hope they show up in search results. If you want your site to be found, or if you want to improve your standing here are some SEO techniques that have proven effective.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process of increasing the visibility of a website or a web page in search engine results. The practice involves optimizing both the content and technical aspects of websites. Implementing SEO practices on your site will help it rank higher in search engine results and therefore generate more visitors. SEO is made up of multiple elements, and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important. In short, SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers.
The Important Elements of SEO Marketing
Keywords
When undertaking the key steps of keyword research, it’s important to look for ones that have high search rates and low competition and to choose short-tail keywords, long-tail keywords , and local keywords to work into your content. Along with a primary or seed keyword, you should also have secondary and tertiary keywords as they will still offer value to your business. Finally, use keywords to optimize all your titles, URLs, and other on-page SEO elements.
Content
Content is a vital part of SEO because it’s the vehicle you use to reach and engage audiences. Today’s content must be educational, but also interesting, relevant, and shareable. Content comes in a variety of forms, including:
- Web page content
- Videos
- Blogs (it’s easy to start your own blog to practise)
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Listicles
- How-to guides
- Whitepapers and e-books
- Social media posts
- Local Listings
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO involves external optimization practices that happen away from your site rather than on it. The main technique used for off-page SEO is backlink building since quality backlinks to your site from external sites tell search engines that your site is valuable and high-quality which helps to build authority. There are many tactics to backlink building, and some of the current best practices include guest blogging, creating lots of infographics that will be highly shared, and using influencer marketing in your content.
Local SEO
Local SEO is becoming increasingly important as more and more people use mobile devices for search. These days, 60% of all searches are performed on a mobile device , and nearly half of those searches have local intent. Along with using local keywords, other local SEO best practices include claiming directory listings, creating location-specific pages for your site, and creating pages for your business (also called doorway pages) on Google My Business local directories and Google Maps.
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to paid marketing efforts, and it includes things like native ads, Google AdWords, social media ads, pay-per-click (PPC), Google shopping ads, display ads, and more.
Although SEM isn’t always a major component of a comprehensive SEO strategy, it does have its place as it can help you reach new and highly targeted audiences. You can also make your SEO and SEM work together.
Examples of SEM advertising activities include:
- Paid and targeted campaigns
- Keyword based copy that specifically relates to your business or product
- Performance indicators such as click-through-rates (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC)
The Importance of SEO for Modern Businesses
Visibility and Rankings
One of the most important functions of SEO is increasing visibility, which means making it easier for prospects to find you when they search for something you have to offer. Visibility is directly related to your ranking. The higher you rank on a search engine result page (SERP), the more likely prospects will see you and click through to your site, so it’s key to increase your organic page ranking. The more effective your SEO efforts, the higher your ranking and the better your visibility, which is especially important when you consider that a quarter of web users never click past the first SERP.
Web Traffic
Increased web traffic is one of the main goals of SEO, and you increase traffic when you increase visibility and rankings. Consider this for a moment: the #1 spot on a Google search gets nearly 32% of clicks and moving up just one spot in search results can increase CTR by an amazing 30.8%. The golden grail for many marketers is the ‘Featured Snippet’ which is often referred to as position #0 as it appears above the first ranked URL. This is usually content that’s taken from a landing page on a blog that answers a question people are searching for and can give your organic click-through a huge boost. So, if you want more people to find your website through a search engine, then you need to use SEO practices that will help you rank among the top five positions, and ideally number one.
Authority
Page Authority (PA) is increasingly important to search engines as it’s becoming more important to web users. Essentially, authority means that your website is trustworthy, high quality, relevant, and has something to offer. Scores range from 1 to 100 and the higher your number, the more authority your site has. You can find your PA rating by using tools such as Moz and while it’s difficult to influence it, many SEO experts believe it’s to do with link profile – getting external links from credible and well visited sources.
Creating a Better Visitor Experience
Another reason SEO is critical is because all the time you put into generating great content and on-page SEO optimization improves the usability of your site. This creates a seamless and positive customer experience. By increasing your page load speed, you’ll reduce your bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend longer on your site. Consumers expect a page to load as quickly as possible with a limit on loading to not creep past three seconds! The longer the load time, the higher the bounce rate and the lower your conversions.
Search Engines Are Fallible
SEO is important because search engines aren’t perfect. If you don’t take steps to counter their failings, then your website will pay the price. Other common areas where search engines can run into problems include:
- Duplicate pages
- Forms
- Images, flash, audio files, video, and other non-textual content
- Language and Semantics
Conclusion
SEO is an online marketing technique that seeks to improve the ranking of a website or a web page in search engines for targeted keywords. The biggest success in SEO is not having the best SEO but to have both the most effective SEO and least expensive SEO. It’s important to remember that using search engine marketing tactics will help improve your website ranking in the search engines, which ultimately leads to more traffic and potential customers. SEO is a powerful tool for any business, large or small. A well-optimized website can increase traffic, improve user experience and boost your brand recognition. Furthermore, optimizing a site will help businesses attract quality leads that they can contact. An optimized website also has the potential to rank well on search engines, leading to higher consumer awareness of the business and increased sales conversions.