To many entrepreneurs, SEO is a complex process best handed down to their webmasters to take care of. Who can blame them? Every time one finds out that search engines “updated their algorithms” there’s a pile of do’s, don’ts, and conflicting advice all over the Internet.
However, as a business owner, you have a huge role in your SEO efforts especially when it comes to understanding your customers’ “behavior” and how they search for your product online. The goal is to not show the visitors the same old thing but to present your business in a new, useful, and engaging way.
What is SEO?
In the simplest definition, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technical, analytical, and creative process to fine-tune a website to increase its visibility in search engines like Google.
The whole process of SEO is to:
- Learn what relevant keywords to include
- Create useful content
- Get the attention of search engines
Its main function is to bring in more visitors to a website that will convert into sales.
Why Use SEO Marketing?
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Internet marketing using SEO is very important. Ranking high on Google is practically free advertising on the most popular search engine in the world.
The way you drive traffic to your website can make or break your online business. While others opt for paid advertising, a Google top organic search result is still considered the most valuable traffic to a landing page.
- SEO Helps in Crafting Your Ideal Business Description – right description and meta tags attract attention and entices consumers to stay longer on your website.
- SEO Builds Your Credibility – the primary purpose of your online presence is to provide something of value to people. SEO marketing is one of the most powerful tools for getting attention and establishing rapport.
- SEO Works Well with Other Marketing Strategies – pairing up SEO with your social networking sites can give way to extended customer reach.
- SEO Puts You Alongside Top Competition – higher placement in search results gives your product/service the chance to make a positive impression in comparison with other brands.
Best SEO Marketing
The art of SEO marketing lies in understanding how people search for your products and evaluating what type of results Google wants to display to its users.
You can generate highly targeted leads by optimizing your website and developing your content to be as relevant as possible for a prospect looking for your company, product, or service.
Brian Dean, a top SEO specialist and a team at Backlinko analyzed 1 million Google results to see which factors are important for SEO. Below is a guide to effective white hat SEO.
Backlinks still bring far-reaching results
Backlinks are still the number one essential ranking factor that Google uses. The study found that you need backlinks from a lot of different domains. If you get 100 backlinks from 100 different domains, you’re in a good position.
Link Building Tools you can utilize:
- LinkMiner Plugin (Free)
- Moz SEO Toolbar & Majestic Backlink Analyzer Extensions (*Freemium)
- Buzzstream (Paid)
*Freemium – a combination of the words ‘free’ and ‘premium’. It’s a business model in which a core product is given away for free to a large group of users and premium products are sold to a smaller fraction of this user base.
A high bounce rate equals lower rankings
The study found that sites with more bounces tended to rank lower in Google than sites with a low bounce rate.
If visitors bounce off your site more often, it sends a message to Google that people don’t like reading your content. So this makes Google downrank sites with lots of bounces.
Dean states in the report that in general, great content aids in lowering bounce rates. So, chances are, people are going to stick around longer if they find informative and interesting articles.
Long-form content ranks better in Google
According to Dean’s data, the average first page results in Google contain 1,890 words per article. Another study by BuzzSumo found that longer content resulted in more shares on social media.
Content effectiveness tools
The tools below will help you find new ideas and optimize your current content.
- Outdated Content Finder (Free)
- Yoast WordPress Plugin (Freemium)
- BuzzSumo (Paid)
In-depth, focused content outperforms content about a variety of topics: They also discovered that an article rated as “topically relevant” ranked above an article with a low content score.
Google prefers fast-loading websites
Site speed makes a difference. Google made it clear that they use site speed as part of their algorithm.
Technical SEO tools you can utilize:
These tools can help you dig around on the ‘back-end’ of your site, getting to know how it functions and any issues with it.
- WooRank Plugin (Free)
- Screaming Frog (Freemium)
- DeepCrawl (Paid)
To sum it all up, SEO success is a long process and doesn’t just happen overnight. You should always ask, “Does my website provide a good user experience?”
If you expect to rank in Google, you’d better offer visitor satisfaction, relevance, quality content, and overall excellent user experience not based on manipulation or old-school tactics.
Resources:
www.smartinsights.com
www.hobo-web.co.uk
www.entrepreneur.com
www.business2community.com
