If you haven’t invested in SEO, you’re not only behind in terms of marketing strategy for a small business, but you’re also missing out on numerous opportunities to attract potential customers and expand your reach by connecting with an interested online audience.
Still not convinced? Here are some SEO statistics that you cannot disregard.
- 68% of online experiences start with a search engine
- 63% of all shopping starts online, including purchases that happen in a store
- 70% of online marketers state SEO is better than PPC when it comes to sales
- 66% of consumers perform online research before making a purchase
- 76% of consumers who search for a local business visit a related business in 24 hours
Frequently, individuals rely on search engines to make purchasing choices or locate businesses that can meet their requirements. It is crucial for your business to appear on the initial page of Google (or, even more preferably, among the top three organic search results).
A lot of businesses spend a lot of money hiring SEO consultants or agencies because mastering SEO can be confusing. However, it is important to remember that SEO is a journey and not a race, so it may take some time to see results. This means that you may use up your marketing budget without seeing any worthwhile outcomes.
Below are some essential SEO strategies entrepreneurs can use to boost their traffic:
1. Understanding your target audience
In order to successfully drive traffic to your business, one important step is to clearly determine your target audience. This is essential because receiving traffic from individuals who are not part of your intended market will be unproductive, since they are unlikely to be interested in your products or services. Therefore, it is necessary to concentrate on attracting traffic from your specific target audience.
To begin, familiarize yourself with your target audience’s demographics and pain points. Once you have this understanding, you can more effectively generate content that attracts the appropriate individuals to your business.
2. Keyword research
When it comes to SEO, the objective is to achieve a high ranking for your website on search engines by targeting specific keywords. Consequently, keyword research becomes a critical aspect of an SEO strategy. In actuality, without incorporating significant keywords into your content, your SEO campaign is unlikely to yield successful results. For this reason, it is imperative to allocate resources towards conducting thorough keyword research when commencing your campaign.
In simple terms, keyword research involves the entire process of locating appropriate keywords that can attract your website’s intended audience. It is essential to search for the particular keywords that your clients typically use when seeking the services or products you provide.
It can be tedious and time-consuming to conduct keyword research manually. However, there are numerous software options available that can simplify and expedite the process for you. Examples of such programs include Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs. These software tools assist in identifying the appropriate keywords and even provide information on their search volume.
When considering the use of keywords on your website, it is important to be cautious. It is crucial that you avoid overloading your website with excessive keywords. Overloading your website with keywords can hinder readability for users. To ensure a simple and readable content, utilize keywords appropriately.
3. Site architecture optimization
You need to optimize your website architecture because regardless of the quality of your content, it plays a vital role in determining the amount of traffic you will get. If search engine spiders and users struggle to find your content, they will likely lose interest in your offerings.
It is generally advised that users should be able to access the most important web pages on your website within three clicks. If users have difficulty finding these pages, they will probably not revisit your website. Additionally, using a brief and memorable URL is worth considering.
4. Content marketing
Naturally, the success of your SEO campaign will greatly benefit from content marketing. Hence, it is crucial to allocate a significant amount of resources to the creation and promotion of your content. Importantly, the following steps will elucidate the various aspects of content marketing.
Create and publish high-quality content
The type of content you create will be crucial in content marketing. Even if you drive traffic to your website using other methods, visitors will be driven away by low-quality content.
When creating content, it is important to think systematically and rephrase the following text to preserve its meaning. It is crucial to satisfy the different questions of your audience with reliable answers. Additionally, the content should be well-written, properly formatted, and easily understandable. If utilizing written materials, ensure they are punctuated correctly and contain no grammatical mistakes.
If you don’t want to create and publish content yourself, you can hire freelance content creators to assist you.
Use an interesting meta description
The purpose of the meta description is to provide readers with an overview of the content contained in your article. It is displayed below the article’s headline in search results. It is important that your meta description is captivating enough to entice readers to read your content.
Utilize engaging headlines and title tags
In order to enhance engagement on your website, it is important to have an interesting title tag that helps internet users locate your site with relevant keywords. Additionally, it is crucial to ensure that your headline is engaging to attract readers, while being mindful not to make it excessively lengthy.
5. Update existing content
Optimizing existing content can often lead to greater gains than starting from scratch when it comes to creating top-ranking content.
In order to see significant benefits, it is important to optimize the top-performing pages on your website. However, it should be noted that not all old content is worth upgrading. To do this, go to the Google search console and click on Behavior in the left side panel, then select Site Content and finally, click on pages.
In a systematic manner, analyze the following text to express the same meaning. Avoid adding or removing information. Evaluate the effectiveness of the content by identifying pages that are receiving a significant number of views or have untapped potential but are ranking on the second page of Google search results. Utilize Market Muse or your preferred content optimization tool to identify areas where each piece is lacking.
Market Muse can help you identify the necessary keywords and target word count for each article to enhance its chances of ranking on the first page. Enhance your content by introducing new topics or expanding on existing ones to address any gaps. Furthermore, you can improve content quality by including new images, integrating additional keywords, and incorporating new internal links.
6. Optimize for future snippet
If you don’t prioritize featured snippets, you’re missing out on a lot. By ranking for featured snippets, which are positioned at the top of Google Serps, you can boost your website’s traffic by 30%. Additionally, ranking for featured snippets enhances your brand authority and increases click-through rates.
The featured snippet, located at the top of Google SERPs, is an excerpt of specific content. It offers a concise answer to a search query and can include text or video content.
What is required to achieve a position zero ranking?
- Use questions in your article. According to a study by SEMRush, 29% of search queries that trigger featured snippets are question-based. That is, they start with a question-based word such as do, can, why, etc.
- Date your content. More often than not, Google picks the most up-to-date content for the featured snippet. It can only decide how recent an article is if there’s a publish date.
- Keep your content current: Google tends to favor the most current articles. The same study found that 70% of featured snippets return content published not later than three years.
- Keep in mind that featured snippets can take one of the four formats: listicle, table, video, or paragraph. As you write your content, use these formats naturally within your articles. SEMRush recommends keeping each of the text formats to 40-50 words whilst making it as succinct as possible.
7. Build a proper internal linking strategy
In order to increase organic traffic, it is not always necessary to generate new content. Instead, implementing an effective internal linking strategy can draw attention to the low-ranking pages of a website, specifically those that are stuck on page two.
This is the way it functions:
If an article ranks on the first page, it means that it has established stronger link authority and relevance signals compared to an article on the second page. By linking both articles, you distribute the link authority and relevance signals to the lower-ranking article, enabling it to gain the momentum to move up to the first page.
8. Prioritize content distribution
The power of content distribution should not be underestimated, according to Ross Simmonds, CEO at Foundation Inc. Many brands struggle with content marketing because they do not distribute their content effectively.
To effectively improve your website traffic, it is necessary to utilize other distribution channels in addition to organic SEO, as relying solely on organic SEO will not yield the desired results.
To tackle this, consider repurposing your content. You can transform your blog post into either a Twitter thread or a YouTube Video. Another option is to create a blog post summarizing the key takeaways from your webinar video. Additionally, whenever you make updates to a blog post, remember to notify your social media followers.
There are endless possibilities for repurposing content, so be imaginative and take advantage of every opportunity to attract new viewers. In addition, consider guest posting on reputable websites related to health to create backlinks to your own pages.
9. Create content that ranks
We strongly believe that content and SEO are inseparable, just like eggs and bacon. This belief stems from our understanding of Google’s algorithm, which highly values up-to-date and original content. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can make the most of your content to succeed in SEO.
By launching and consistently updating a blog, you can generate a continuous stream of fresh content containing both short- and long-tail keywords. The greater the amount of content you produce, the higher the number of keywords you will rank for, resulting in an increase of potential customers visiting your website. Simply by regularly sharing blog posts, we have witnessed businesses multiplying their traffic by over 1,000% within a span of 18 months.
In a step-by-step thinking process, rephrase the given text while preserving the original meaning. Do not introduce new information and avoid removing any existing information. Create multiple landing pages to expand your website. Within your navigation, consider incorporating around 5 to 10 landing pages that are applicable to your business. These pages can either describe a particular service or provide answers to common questions. Expand your perspective beyond the basic “About” and “Contact” pages and explore ways to employ your keywords in comprehensive pages filled with rich content and multimedia elements.
Testimonials and case studies are effective in naturally incorporating keywords on your website. Additionally, they provide an opportunity to demonstrate exceptional customer service and convince potential clients of the value in choosing your business.
