SEO is no longer a DIY process that site owners can do in their spare time. Businesses and bloggers serious about expanding their brand and increasing their digital revenue are dedicating resources to the multiple factors that SEO comprises. Here are some of the things to look out for if you want to keep your SEO strategy relevant.
Efficient Keyword Research
Keyword research is a multi-layered process where you have to connect your site content with the search queries and phrases that are relevant to your business. There are many tools available, some free and some paid which will help you organize your industry-relevant keywords, share important search engine statistics and get a glimpse of competitor behavior. So before you get started on new content or overhauling existing one, make sure you are armed with the best keywords for your business.
Many site owners tend to get carried away once they have received their set of keywords. The urge to incorporate them heavily in your content will be there – you may feel that you are missing out by not including all your keywords. But in reality, search engine algorithms have evolved and quality content with a natural flow gets precedence over content with a focus on keyword insertion.
Benefits of Backlinks
With more complex and new theories abounding the SEO landscape, one may tend to forget the older practices. However, one of these is backlinks. There is a proven positive correlation between links and Google rank.
There are many benefits of prioritizing backlinks in your SEO plan. For Google (and other search engine crawlers) to identify this aspect, backlinks need to be from quality authoritative sites and relevant to the topic. With backlinks, your site gets indexed faster – this is very important for newly launched websites that will benefit from some organic search momentum.
To improve your search engine rankings, you need to have backlinking to specific pages in your website along with the main page or homepage. The kind of traffic you get from linking is high-quality. It is categorized as referral traffic and is much sought after because of the lower bounce rates. Guest posts and off-page blogging are some ways to create a nice integrated backlink strategy.
Optimize your Homepage
How you balance unique content and SEO keyword requirements on your homepage is also very important. Experts recommend a reduced amount of anchor texts with smart natural placements. There are certain backlink techniques that are especially relevant for the homepage.
Keeping Visitors Engaged with Content Fundamentals
Think of a brick-and-mortar shop. Whenever a person walks in, the sales executive tries to keep the individual engaged. Supermarkets are designed to make visitors explore deeper. The longer the engagement, the higher the probability of a sale is. The same applies to your digital store too. The longer visitors explore, the closer you get to a conversion or a query, and you also enhance the chances of a repeat visit.
Recent research suggests that there may be a relationship between the higher organic search rank of a page and lower bounce rates. Engaging content is one of the best ways to reduce bounce rates. To create such prose, you do not have to do anything complicated.
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Easy Prose
Short paragraphs and shorter sentences are the keys to keeping your site visitor interested. When people are browsing on a computer or mobile screen, they scan more than they read. This is why sub-headers are very crucial. Bullet points also make information easier to scan.
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Images and other Media
Images register longer for site visitors. So if you have a relevant picture that can add to your content, make sure you incorporate it. Images can also replace a section of your text. With the right design layout, the image can be the focus while the text content just adds more peripheral information or descriptions. If you are trying to represent statistics and data – infographics and screenshots are very good elements. They are also easily shareable so this allows your brand more visibility.
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Journalistic Approach
There are different writing styles that can be adopted for your content – especially blogs and social posts which allow for more details and experimentation. SEO experts still recommend the journalistic inverted pyramid style of content creation. Begin with the actual details of the product, service, or event, and then ease in the details before you top it up with some additional context.
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Leverage Existing Pages
Delivering unique 2000-word blogs consistently over a sustained period of time is not easy. However, you can be resourceful and monitor existing pages that have been getting visits (and those that you think can do with more views). Update the content, edit out archaic or outdated information and make the content longer (following the engagement tips above). Since existing pages have already been indexed, you can enjoy a spike in traffic without having to create brand new content.
Video SEO and Best Practices
Do you have a video on your website, or are you planning to put one up? Videos too can be a good SEO element, provided you get a few things in order. That video title is worth spending some time on – it has to get people very interested but you can also squeeze in some SEO-friendly text there. The video description also needs to be concise and include SEO-friendly words. Many recommend a small descriptive paragraph instead of a jumble of catchphrases. This content gets identified better by the search engine crawlers. Longer videos also tend to get higher ranks and a clear thumbnail increases the chances that someone would click on it.
SEO is all about the data so apart from using some of the tips mentioned above, learn to scan for interesting trends and spend time poring over your site analytics. With enough information, you will be able to sharpen your optimization strategies with customized inputs.
There is more to SEO as it is a very dynamic field. However, getting the basics right ensures that you have a healthy website and good traffic.