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Most businesses have started the year with the same old SEO strategy, but not you. You are reading this post to learn how you can tap into over half of the world’s population online.
In our previous discussion, we highlighted that 4.66 billion people cruise the ‘net and as numbers continue to rise and tendencies shift, it’s time to refresh your understanding of SEO and its practices.
This is the second part of our 3-post series. Let’s chat about what practices you’ll want to add to your digital marketing plans.
If you’d like to start with our first post, click here to read up on why SEO matters more than ever.
Common SEO Best Practices
Technology has invited us to re-evaluate the way that we do things. Measuring performance has helped us flag what works and what doesn’t.
When you understand effective practices, it’s easier to employ them. So, let’s review each of them.
Target Your Visitors with Keyword Research
Keyword research is “the” aspect to cover in SEO. The results uncover market insights and buyers’ intent.
There is a lot of power in understanding the market and how your potential customers are searching online.
You will familiarize yourself with your audience’s search queries in trying to find your business and those of your competitors through keyword research.
Since we’ve already discussed why research matters, now let’s find out how to get started:
- Make a list of possible search terms
- Think about common words or phrases you’d use.
- Vary wording; look for similar expressions.
- Use resources
- Google Ads Keyword Planner to determine the search volume of your keyword list and the potential cost of running them in a search campaign.
- Ubersuggest
- Conduct competitor research to see which keywords you could add or exclude
- Analyze the keywords you have chosen:
- Are they relevant?
- Would you be satisfied if you visited a website after performing this search?
- Do you think this keyword aligns with your business goals?
- What is the likelihood that you will engage audiences with this keyword?
Pro Tip: Watch and add long-tail keywords. “Long-tail keywords often convert better because they catch people later in the buying/conversion cycle. A person searching for “shoes” is probably browsing and not ready to buy. On the other hand, someone searching for “best price on Air Jordan Size 12” practically has their wallet out!”
Prioritize Content Strategy
Google, Microsoft, and other search engine platforms strive to provide the best user experience.
Before creating and implementing content, you need direction to align with audience intention. That way, the content on your website helps users find exactly what they’re looking for.
Below we discuss key aspects of content strategy to gain a user’s trust and experience.
Quality
Everyone wants to achieve quality content, but how does one attain it? Structure.
A good organization of ideas for your content makes it easy to skim through, read, and digest for audiences.
Beginning with a well outlined structure will give you a good idea of how much information you have, what you’re missing, and where you need to limit yourself.
A standard blog post is over 1,000 words. You’ll need to determine the appropriate length for your reader.
Consider people searching on their phones. Make your content easily accessible to mobile users.
Other tips to consider:
- Write with the end user in mind
- Double-check grammar and spell-check
- Enhance text with pictures, videos, or different types of media
- Highlight or format the most prominent content
Originality
You want your customers to trust that your brand is original without being redundant that you are unique.
You do this by infusing your value proposition into your content.
Great, but what’s a value proposition?
It refers to the value a company promises to deliver. Everyone is different, as are brands, even if products are similar. You have a unique position in your industry and market.
Define your value proposition with essential questions we’ve borrowed from HBS to formulate your strategy.
Once you have that ready, you can move on to create more purposeful content.
It will be easier to index content through HTML text format with these steps:
- Make sure all of your images have alt text (caption descriptions)
- Supplement Flash or Java plug-ins with text on the page
- Provide transcripts for video or audio content
Freshness
Aren’t fresh flowers the greatest? Yep, but you’ve got to pick them when they are ready and watch over them before they go bad. Your website content works the same way.
To search engines, you can become a source of valuable information. Update your site with relevant topics that are helpful and up-to-date. Remember to match the industry’s real-time occurrences to your content, and it’ll keep it “fresh.”
Make It A Breeze For Visitors To Navigate Through Your Site With User-Friendly Design
Achieve a user-friendly design with a map. If your team maps out all the available information in an easy way to find, it will guide search engines intuitively.
Your efforts go beyond that of just pleasing your readers; it also directs search engines to understand how to navigate your website with ease.
Your website should be consistent in layout, design, and labeling to meet this standard.
Consequently, make sure all your links and buttons are text-based.
Pro Tip: Before you launch your website, test every link, button, and icon for Quality Assurance. Don’t fret when you discover misplaced links, just correct and move on.
The Best Tip for Improving Your SEO Traffic: Title Tag and Meta Description Implementation
Title tags and meta descriptions are often the first words that appear in your search. The accuracy and relevance of these sections influence fluctuations in traffic. When writing them, you should:
- Identify your unique selling point (USP):
- What makes your business unique in a world of competitors?
- Include a clear call-to-action (CTA):
- How can you send the same message using variation? Test different word combinations. Keep the one that performs the best.
- Write engaging content:
- How can you amplify engagement? Combine your unique value proposition and call-to-actions.
- Consider optimal length:
- 65 to 75 characters for Meta titles
- 150 to 155 characters for Meta descriptions
- Keyword insertion:
- As a best practice, try inserting your main keyword at the beginning of your Meta Title, so when the SERP truncates titles that exceed a certain length, your title will display its most relevant part.
It’s Time To Revamp Your SEO Strategy
We’ve started to tackle our list of best practices for your 2022 SEO strategy. Stay tuned for the last post of our 3-post series where we get into link building and common SEO concerns. Want to get a head start on SEO efforts, sure, learn from our experts.
