As a small or midsize business owner, some of your biggest goals might be expanding your online footprint and increasing traffic to your website. While these may seem like easy goals to reach by simply being active on social media, there’s a lot more to it than that. By now you know how important SEO is. The good news is you don’t have to be an expert in SEO marketing to improve yours, but it could be valuable to work with an SEO company to save you some time. This is especially true if you put SEO on the backburner because there are too many other things to do with your business.
The biggest secret to successful SEO might be that there isn’t a single strategy that works for everyone. Business owners have to be willing to measure results and adjust accordingly. Combine this flexibility with knowing what goes into a great SEO strategy and you’ll be on your way to increasing visibility, conversions, and revenue. These factors all go into creating an effective SEO marketing strategy.
Select The Right Keywords
Selecting the right keywords to focus on could take some time. You have to not only think about what you believe your keywords should be, but what your customers will be searching for and what Google will determine as being relevant. Your competitors will likely be using the same or very similar keywords as you, so the hard part is finding keywords with high search volumes, but low competition. You can find keyword tools available online to help you with this and some even offer suggestions for specific keywords you might want to consider.
Once you’ve chosen the right keywords, you’ve completed half the battle. The next part is using them in the right places without overusing them. Sprinkle your keywords in content, page titles, blogs, product descriptions, headers, URLs, and more. Just be sure not to overuse them to the point where it seems obvious you are keyword-stuffing. Otherwise, Google will notice it and your SEO efforts will be used against you by lowering your search ranking.
Prioritize A Simple User Experience
It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of creating your website and spending way too much time using keyword tools rather than enhancing the user experience. Take a step back periodically and ensure your website is clear, simple, and easy for a user to navigate. Your URLs should even indicate what the particular page is all about. If website visitors can’t easily find what they are looking for or if your load times take too long, they will leave to find another website. All of these details can impact your SEO, so be sure to keep a clean and tidy website for your visitors at all times.
Website Speed Matters
One of the first things every SEO company will do when looking at your website is confirm the website speed. No one likes a slow website. If yours takes more than 3-4 seconds to load, you can expect to lose a significant number of visitors. You can take several steps to boost your website speed. It’s possible you got a little too overzealous with images or videos, so you can reduce the size or remove them. It’s also common for people to use too many plugins, which can make your website take too long to load. Keep your website speed as fast as possible and you’ll boost your SEO and keep customers on your page longer.
Create A Mobile-Friendly Website
With more people using mobile devices than ever before, it’s just as important to have a mobile-friendly website as it is to have a great website for computer viewing. Not only does it make your website look more user-friendly on mobile devices, but Google will boost your SEO ranking as well. With the busy lives people have today, people tend to perform Google searches more on mobile devices. Ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is a great SEO marketing strategy to keep in mind and a reputable SEO company can assist you if needed.
Expand Your Online Presence
A big part of SEO is how widespread your online presence is outside of your website. This includes user reviews, whether you have any backlinks to your website, social media engagements, and more. Expanding your online presence is one of the most effective ways to earn new customers since people want to see how businesses interact with others.
One of the ways you can expand your online presence is by publishing new and relevant content regularly and sharing it through multiple channels. You might also consider guest blogging on other reputable websites and using backlinks to your website. These strategies can increase your footprint and your social media following to make you appear even more credible to Google. Consider signing up for the free Google My Business tool that will help you identify and manage your online presence so you can see what areas you need to improve in.
Incorporate The Right Mix Of Images And Videos
Visuals often trigger emotional responses, which is why they have become so popular on websites today. The right mix of images and videos can be highly effective in keeping people on your website longer. However, too many of them can make your load times slower and have the opposite effect. Consider adding relevant videos about your products, company, or other information that might boost the interests of your viewers. Not only will the videos potentially make them stay on your website longer, but if they like it enough, they might share it on social media. All of these factors can lead to a better SEO ranking.
Create Content People Want To Read
Content is and will always be king when it comes to SEO marketing. Some business owners make the mistake of stuffing their content with keywords, which makes it unnatural to read. You should always write for humans rather than trying to make sure your content has as many keywords as possible. The goal is to make your website a valuable go-to resource for your customers so they won’t have to go anywhere else to get the information they need. Google recognizes this as well and you’ll improve your SEO as a result.
Focus on creating engaging and relevant content for your pages, including periodic blog posts. Always selling your products isn’t a great way to keep readers engaged. Instead, focus on problems people might have and then show how your products could be the solution. Throw in a mix of industry-related articles that might not necessarily be promoting your products just to change things up a bit and keep your audience engaged.
Use Backlinks Strategically
Using backlinks can be a very valuable SEO marketing strategy and there are many different ways to approach it. Some business owners think it makes sense to pay for backlinks, but that’s not the case for everyone. One of the most effective ways to get credible backlinks is to create relationships with other non-competing businesses and backlink to each other’s websites. Google loves backlinks, but it also has pretty strong requirements when it comes to using them. The backlinks have to be to a credible website that enhances the user experience. Simply incorporating backlinks to irrelevant websites just to say you have backlinks isn’t the strategy to take. Again, the goal is to create the best user experience possible by providing the information they came to receive.
Be Willing To Adjust Strategies
Every SEO company will tell you the biggest secret to successful SEO is the willingness to adjust strategies. You might find the perfect SEO marketing strategy for your company, but then it starts losing effectiveness over time. Instead of trying to make it work, you might have to abandon it completely in favor of another strategy. Business dynamics change and so do consumer trends. You have to be willing to monitor results and make adjustments to stay ahead of your competition and have the highest search ranking possible.
WebNet Marketing Studio can help you put together an SEO marketing strategy that works and continues to evolve. Flexibility is what we build our business on since we know every company has different goals. Whether you’re looking to expand your online presence quickly or if you are slowly getting your website strategy together, we can help. Feel free to contact us at any time to learn more about our services and how we can make your SEO efforts successful.