Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a mainstay in digital marketing. SEO remains one of the most valuable tools in increasing your visibility on the internet with long-term results. SEO is composed of various strategies that help a website rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO is an organic digital marketing approach, meaning you don’t pay for search engines to rank you higher than the other sites. If you are considering SEO for your e-commerce site or your new work in the digital marketing industry, then this article is for you.
Here are some basic strategies of SEO that you can try for a website:
Adding Tags
The first task in SEO is to make simple code changes, as said by Digital Authority Partners. You will have to add tags in either the back end or in the CMS Editor mode. You will have to put the title tag, meta description, alt tags, and canonical tags. These tags should contain your keywords.
You will put the title tag and meta description for every piece of content on your website. Here’s what a title tag and a meta description look like:
<title>Title tag</title>
<meta name=” description” content=” Write your meta description here”>
Alt tags are like captions for photos that you upload to the website. Alt tags help search engine crawlers know about the images that you upload. On the other hand, canonical tags inform crawlers on which contents or articles are the original and should be indexed.
These tags help the search engine locate your website and get to know what your website offers to the users.
It will be good to add keywords to your tags and use these consistently so that the search engines will recommend your site for niche topics and specific audiences. In this way, you can reach your target market faster, and your site will be able to rank for your targeted keywords.
2. Link Building
Another SEO task is to connect content or blogs to the website’s inner pages and other relevant sites on the internet. This strategy is also called on-page optimization, which helps enrich your connections and boost your visibility on the internet.
You can also ask permission from high-ranking publication sites if you can guest post. This technique is called off-page optimization. This way, you increase your reputation score and improve your ranking in search engines.
Another way to build your links is to optimize your content through social media. You can introduce your blog on your website and persuade your audience to read the blog. Leave the blog URL or include your keywords in the hashtags.
Vice versa, add a hyperlink in the keywords inside your blog and lead the user to your social media page. Social media helps create a prosperous link-building campaign that will help search engines recommend your site to your target market.
3. SEO Content Writing
One of the regular tasks of SEO is writing content and blogs that contain keywords and links. Content writing lets you feature your product or service’s unique selling proposition (USP) and persuade your target audience to purchase.
Through content writing or blogging, you can also explain the benefits of your product and answer some frequently asked questions. SEO content writing enables you to highlight qualities about your brand and clear misconceptions from the public.
You can learn more about content writing by studying how other established companies do it. Write freely on the topics that concern your brand and include keywords that target audiences may use to find your product or service.
Include in your keywords some descriptions that separate your brand from competitors. Make sure to link to relevant sites to encourage readers to learn more about the topic you have written. Choose to partner with sites that have a good reputation and higher rank in search engines.
4. Local Directory Listing
Another SEO task is listing the website in local directory sites such as Google My Business, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, Foursquare, and Yellow Pages. These popular local directory sites can help you capture ready customers and clients who are within the community.
These people will easily recognize your physical store or brand name online because they might have come across your shop. Their familiarity with your brand can help you persuade them to try out your product or service and purchase right away.
When you register on the local directory site, ensure that your contact information is accurate and that you have submitted your location map. Also, submit your phone number, website URL, email, and social media URLs on the registration page.
Have staff ready to attend to incoming calls, emails, and queries from your website chatbot or social media page. You do not want to waste your leads, so you better have a ready client database to document all transactions.
5. Monitoring SEO Performance
The most time-consuming task of SEO is the monitoring of all digital marketing campaigns. Evaluating the core SEO activities is not enough; you will have to check how other digital marketing funnels contribute to the progress of the entire marketing efforts.
You can assess how strategies contribute to reaching the sales target by looking into factors such as ranking on the search engine results page, gaining keyword dominance, increasing the conversion rate of keywords, garnering more leads, and growing the number of backlinks.
You can use Google Search Console, Google AdWords, and Google Trends to evaluate your SEO efforts and see from which marketing funnel your target market is making the purchase.
You can also trace the progression of your target audience’s decision-making as they move from one marketing funnel to another and, finally, to buy your product or service. You can make adjustments in your choice of keywords as you discover which ones have a higher conversion rate for your brand.
Final Words
SEO gives you a lot of opportunities to get the word out about your website. If you employ the strategies correctly, you can generate more leads every day and help your brand attract more customers or clients. The more you use SEO, the more long-term benefits it will provide to your online business. SEO is your best buddy as you begin a new business or career venture today.