Ten Things You Need to Do for Your SEO Right Now
When you look at any job posting, article title, online ad, or wording on a picture, you are seeing examples of SEO at work. But what is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is primarily used by Google and other viral online social media platforms. It can help spread the word about your content and expose your ads to audiences that have never seen your brand. Crazily enough, this blog is using SEO as we speak! Read on to learn more about SEO and how to use it to your marketing advantage.
What is SEO?
People should care about SEO when they begin to market their brand because it is a crucial component of attracting new and existing customers through the power of online search. If consumers are searching for something even slightly related to a product you are trying to sell, SEO can help expose them to your brand.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of optimizing a website or webpage to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of SEO is to increase the quantity and quality of organic (non-paid) traffic to a website or webpage by improving its relevance and authority for specific search queries.
SEO involves a variety of techniques and strategies, including optimizing website content and structure, building high-quality backlinks, conducting keyword research and analysis, and analyzing and refining website performance and user experience. The ultimate goal of SEO is to create a website that provides value to users and meets the criteria of search engine algorithms, resulting in higher search engine rankings and increased traffic.
Brands should care about SEO when they begin to market their brand because it is a crucial component of attracting new and existing customers through the power of online search. If consumers are searching for something even slightly related to a product you are trying to sell, SEO can help expose them to your brand.
Know Your Audience
Just like any other marketing technique, knowing your audience is the best way to grasp the attention of existing and new customers. This is essential because it can help you measure what people have responded to in the past and what is working for your competitors. If you struggle to understand your goal demographic when developing an SEO strategy, you will struggle to convert them. Some great ways to establish a solid understanding of SEO are reading different articles or webinars related to your industry, where you can learn about the right target keywords for your niche.
Clarification often needs to occur in this industry regarding knowing your audience versus your buying persona. A buying persona is a generalized depiction of your ideal customer, whereas your target audience comprises real, genuine people you earn conversions from, often described as the ‘purchasing customer.’ Understanding the difference between your buying persona and the target audience is essential because you will only earn conversions from your target audience. Knowing your buying persona can be very beneficial in other areas of success measurement, but target audiences in cases of SEO are targeted more frequently.
SEO Competitive Analysis
When developing your SEO strategy, you should examine how others are doing it. Conducting an SEO competitive analysis audit is very common in the business world, and SEO strategies are no different. Begin by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ SEO. It can help you develop benchmarks and identify additional areas of improvement in your own SEO strategy.
Here are some steps to follow when conducting an SEO competitive analysis:
Identify your top competitors: Start by identifying your top competitors in your industry or niche. Look for businesses that offer similar products or services and have a similar target audience.
Analyze their website structure and content: Evaluate their website structure and navigation to see how easy it is to use and whether it is optimized for search engines. Analyze their content to see how well it is optimized for keywords and how engaging and relevant it is to their target audience.
Research their keyword strategy: Identify the keywords your competitors are targeting and evaluate how effectively they are using them in their content. Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz to identify the keywords they are ranking for and their search volumes.
Evaluate their link profile: Look at the quality and quantity of links pointing to their website. Identify where their backlinks are coming from and how they are using them to improve their search engine rankings.
Analyze their social media presence: Evaluate your competitor's social media presence and see how they are engaging with their audience. Look for opportunities to engage with your own audience and improve your social media strategy.
Identify areas for improvement: Use the information you have gathered to identify areas where you can improve your SEO strategy. Look for opportunities to optimize your website structure and content, target new keywords, and build high-quality links to your site.
Most importantly, when conducting a competitor analysis, closely examine what is working well. This includes what keywords are performing well and what can be improved. Even if you are performing well in your industry's search category, you must keep an eye on your competitor to ensure they are not taking spots ahead of you for something you could be doing.
Keyword Placement
Keyword placement refers to the strategic placement of keywords within the content of a web page or article to improve its visibility and relevance to search engines. Proper keyword placement is essential for effective search engine optimization (SEO) as it helps search engines understand the content of a page and rank it accordingly.
The top reasons for keyword optimization are:
- Using too many keywords can overdo it and negatively affect your chances of getting featured as opposed to optimizing the right areas.
- Making keywords easy to spot: many readers do not take the time to read the entirety of the article, so if the keywords are not easy to find when they click on your search result, they often won't keep reading.
- Search engines rank different keywords based on page placement. If it appears too random, the value of the keywords will again be discredited.
Developing Your Blog Strategy:
Positioning yourself as a leader in your industry is one of the most important things you can do when running, owning, or participating in a business. Blogs are a great way to spread your knowledge and impress new clients or users with what you know. Blogs are a great way to take advantage of SEO tactics which is a win-win for both you and your website.
Writing blogs is the easiest way to get SEO featured on your page. It is an excellent way to see the above strategies come together and allows you to optimize your blog writing with keyword placement throughout your blog.
Content, Content, Content:
A tale as old as time, content is the best way to increase traffic to your website and drive up SEO. Similarly, if you have done research or tried to grow a TikTok page, posting videos is one of the best ways to get more exposure. It is a surefire way to get the most eyes on your page and encourage people to travel to your external sites, as well as different social media pages. The easiest part of this technique is that everything and anything you produce is content as long as it is positive for your site.
Repurpose Old Content:
Posting new content is an excellent strategy, but the only thing that can one-up it is repurposing old content. It does not matter how many people have already seen something. You can repeatedly have pieces of the content trend, also known as a win in the marketing world.
Video SEO:
Videos are a new way to include SEO in your daily content mix. TikTok and YouTube videos are two of the most popular forms of video content, and these methods offer tons of ways to get people excited about your content. Since the name of the game with SEO is coming up first when people search for topics, videos are a great way to get your name out there.
Specifically for YouTube, ensuring your page is inviting and has the right keywords used in titles, video descriptions, and comments can be a great move. Additionally, video SEO has become a more critical conversation thanks to the popularity of TikTok.
Keep Search Intent in Mind:
Search intent is what each user searches for when they need to look up a topic. Visualize yourself as the person you want to be seeing the content. What are you searching for first, and what are you hoping to find? Search intent can help you structure your content to take advantage of SEO. A great example is clicking on an article and seeing the answer you were looking for at first glance. You will win the SEO game if you can structure your content to favor that.
Emphasis on the Title:
Optimizing SEO through titles is excellent for people trying to improve their click-through rates. The title of an article can help keep your users engaged during reading while simultaneously helping with your search engine optimization. You want to optimize your title search for the search engine results page, often called the SERP. Page titles that often stand out are those that use keywords but do not overstuff them. Keep them dedicated to your niche market without being too direct at who you are targeting.
Focus on your User Experience:
Throughout an article or video, when using tactics for SEO, picture yourself as the desired audience you want to attract. You can use all of the SEO techniques in the world, but it will not matter if you cannot keep your audience engaged. Since a lot of digital progress depends on click-through rates, you still need to produce quality content that is worth all of your hard work on SEO tactics.
If you are looking for a company that can use SEO to your advantage, make sure to give us a call here at L7 Creative, where we can fulfill all of your marketing needs.