In today’s age of digital consumption, appearing at the top of search results is key to making sure you are seen and heard.
Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of establishing and continually improving your website rankings and traffic by performing a number of SEO tactics to land you at the top of organic (non-paid) search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
With so much competition crowding the webspace, it is necessary to research and master the latest digital trends, post captivating content, plus ensure your brand is perfectly packaged for any platform- but without visibility from SEO, all that effort is futile at best.
Many businesses overlook proper SEO strategy when it is actually the most important part of driving traffic and boosting rankings. So we’re going to explain exactly how it works.
If you want to get seen where it matters (Google) by who matters (your target audience), you need to be actively updating and optimizing your website with the latest SEO strategies backed by data. This is where the term “data-driven results” or “data-driven marketing” comes from.
Search trends, audience behaviors, local competitors, as well as new technologies are constantly evolving, so before you go about updating anything, you need to research recent keyword performance, competitor data, and the latest best practices for SEO.
A consistent application (weekly, monthly, quarterly) of the following SEO tactics is crucial to whether your business is even visible online to organic audiences that are actively searching for your specific industry keywords.
Using social media and interactive video content helps you build brand awareness, increase your customer base, and connect with current loyal customers.
Posting relevant, consistent, and helpful content to your target customer goes a long way with social media but it’s crucial to understand the algorithms and advantages behind each platform.
Tell your story through high performance video marketing content and use targeted media campaigns to drive website traffic above the competition. Focus on keywords that are proven to capture organic conversions and pay-per-clicks.
Keyword research is the process of discovering which words or phrases consumers are using to search for your product or service.
It is important to conduct keyword research and to evaluate your competitors’ rankings to see what your entry point is to get your website ranked well.
Many businesses have already optimized their content to rank high with popular competitive keywords. Once you learn how to leverage keywords you can gain higher visibility over competitors.
For local businesses, it’s critical that address and contact information is correct and consistent across the web on all possible platforms.
This provides reliable information to Google about your business and also ensures that your customers can find you or contact you.
The more consistent citations you have listed, the more you will gain trust by Search Engines and therefore increase your Domain Authority and favorability against competitors in searches.
Think of your listings like a billboard for your business. The more you have, the more you will be seen.
Another important factor of SEO is building backlinks. Backlinks are a necessary recurring investment in any successful digital business model today.
It can take time for a website’s ranking algorithm to catch up and find new links, but this is an excellent way of doing so if you have the patience.
A healthy strategy includes at least one fresh monthly blog post, one monthly off-site guest post, and backlink generation for each.
Unfortunately, some things hurt the process, like duplicate content and even having another copycat site rank higher than you.
Business owners often try to improve their backlink profiles by buying them online, however it is advised to build your backlinks organically. It’s important to monitor and remove any toxic backlinks that may be detrimenting your rankings as well.
Technical updates are necessary to make sure that your website is fully functional, loads quickly, and can be crawled properly by search engines. This includes optimizing code, updating plugins, and integrating tracking and analytics to measure results.
Corporations have technical in house SEO specialists who handle the technical site updates.
For small businesses, you will need to be well versed in backend site development, or you will need a developer who knows how to create custom codes and is aware of all the latest practices to keep your site healthy.
META + TITLE TAGS Meta and title tags are a way of adding more information about your site for search engines to properly crawl and digest. The proper keyword research is required in order to produce relevant and trending long-tail keyword phrases.
SCHEMA Schema allows you to classify information on your website that helps it rank with search engines. Schema can include contact info, a map of your office location, and more. Websites often have strict parameters for this type of content, so it is important to find compatible widgets and coding to execute schema.
IMAGE OPTIMIZATION Images and media must be optimized so that they display properly, quickly, and do not decrease the site speed. Tags must also be updated with data-backed keywords and phrases to keep your content ranking well.
Search engines like Google have over 200 ranking factors that can affect your local SEO ranking.
A few of the SEO factors include: content length, content structure, grammar and spelling, co-occurrences, relevant terms or semantic search, and quality and usefulness. Local SEO optimization is particularly important for small business owners competing against larger corporations for ranking.
MAP PACK RANKINGS Map Pack Rankings target people searching local and nearby businesses on Google Maps. The more keyword map pins you create, the better visibility you will have with local searchers. When paired with a large database of listings and citations, your domain authority will also increase.
It’s important when you are getting started to implement an annual SEO strategy and manage your business listings aggressively along with all of the SEO tactics listed above.
SEO is a challenging process that takes time and dedication to understand, but you absolutely have to incorporate these strategies if you want your business to succeed, especially if you are a small local business.
If you’re ready to land your site a prized spot on the first page of Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp search results, you don’t need to do it alone. We can develop an individualized plan to get your SEO strategy on course.
So what will it take to get your business ranking on page one of Google? Contact us for a FREE 30 minute consultation on How to Go from Good to Great with Your SEO. Let’s get you started on the road to digital success!