Did you know that a staggering 75% of users don’t click further than page one of online search results? Even if you have the best content on the web for your topic, if you’re not on the first page, then it’s pretty likely that no one is going to see it. Missing out on valuable traffic means fewer leads. And a knock-on effect for any income your business makes.
Thankfully, by having a solid SEO (search engine optimization) marketing strategy in place, you can give your site the best chances of ranking in those all-important top search results. What’s also great is that it’s not that difficult to implement SEO, once you know what you’re doing.
This article tells you exactly what you should be doing to boost the chances of your online content getting seen, and driving more traffic to your site. So read on, and find out 7 things you should add right now to your SEO marketing strategy.
What Factors Impact SEO?
Before planning your SEO marketing strategy, it’s a good idea to understand what factors impact SEO. Your SEO strategy should include both on-page and off-page elements.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO includes writing articles based on specific long-tail keywords. Your article should be informative and detailed and fulfill the user’s intent. Other things to consider are metadata, which includes the title, and page description.
The speed of our site is also important, with the fastest sites gaining preference in the search results. You will also want to think about how user-friendly your site is and can visitors find what they are looking for efficiently and whether it can be viewed on mobile, tablets, and laptops.
Off-Page SEO
One of the main off-page SEO practices is building backlinks and social media validation. Having other high-quality sites lion back to your site can give your site ranking a boost. Likewise, by having social media share buttons, viewers can easily puh the content on your site to their viewers, which increases the number of people who will see your site.
Both off-site methods give a nod to search engines that your site is worthy of ranking high.
How Do I Create a Long-Term SEO Marketing Strategy?
To see the result from SEO, can take weeks, sometimes months. It’s a long-term game and therefore requires a long-term strategy to match. Below are all the things you should be considered from the planning stages through to the post-publication. By following these SEO rules, you give your site the best chance of ranking on search result pages.
Write to Relevant, Long-Tail Keywords
You’ll want to use a keyword research tool to help you find what people are searching for on the web. If no one is searching for the topic you want to write about, then it’s going to drive zero traffic to your site.
Your keyword should appear in the copy on your site, as well as the title and metadata. It’s also a good idea to have a scattering of similar keywords throughout your article.
The best longtail keywords are specific. For example, “women’s shoes” is too broad. A better choice could be “women’s shoes for hiking”. You could go one step further and narrow it down even more to “women’s shoes for hiking in summer”. You might find that the search volume is lower, however, by being precise, you’re targeting a specific market and boosting your authority on search results.
Create High Quality, In-Depth Content
By writing the best article on the web for your topic, Google will start to see you as an authority on your niche. Focus on what the user is searching for by answering all their questions in your article so they don’t have to go elsewhere.
Back this up by creating cluster content on your topic. Going back to our example from before, your main article could be on “women’s shoes for hiking in summer” but cluster content could be on related topics like “how to take care of your hiking shoes”.
Site Speed
Your site needs to load as quickly as possible, ideally in under 3 seconds. Part of your SEO Marketing strategy should include checking how fast your site loads. If your site is slow, the first thing to look at is the size of images or plugins. Other things that can affect speed can be your theme or host.
If your site is slow, it can be quite complicated to understand exactly what you need to do to speed it up. You may want to hire a developer to help with this.
User-Focused Design
Be honest with yourself. How is your site’s navigation? Can visitors easily find what they are looking for? If the answer is no, then part of your strategy should include focusing on the usability of your site. This can easily be done through the use of menus, and a search bar. Also, assigning categories and tags will help your customer find exactly what they are looking for.
Having an easy-to-navigate system in place, also helps your site get crawled for indexing purposes. It’s great for the user and search results.
Use a Responsive Design
Year on year, there has been an increase in the use of mobile phones to browse the web. If your page is not already mobile-friendly then you run the risk of being penalized in search results.
Search engines favor sites that are responsive, which means that the layout automatically changes to fit the screen you’re viewing on.
Back Linking Strategy
This is a great way to boost search engine results, although be careful o do this legitimately. Do not buy backlinks, this will end up in a penalty from Google. The best way to build backlinks to your site is through guest posting or collaborating with similar sites to your own.
External links going to your site indicate that your content is worthy of attention.
Social Share
Another great strategy to boost your ranking is by using social media share buttons. Make it easy for your visitors to share your content across their social media platforms. This also allows you to access new viewers, driving more traffic to your site.
What’s Does Your SEO Marketing Strategy Look Like?
So do you have an SEO marketing strategy in place? If your site is struggling to rank on the top search engine spots work through the 7 tips here. SEO is a long-term game, it can take weeks or even months to see the fruits of your labor. However, by following the best practices, you stand the best chance of getting seen.
If everything listed here sounds too complicated, you might want to consider using managed SEO services that will take care of all the technical stuff. Contact our knowledgeable team today to talk about your strategy, to get the ranking results you deserve.
