With its recent surge in stock pricing after its much anticipated second-quarter financial results, Alphabet (the parent company of Google) is sitting pretty as one of the world’s most valuable tech companies. But where does this enormous wealth come from? In most cases, it derives its fortunes from ad sales along with a slack handful of other ventures (YouTube, cloud computing, etc). You might be thinking good for them, but what does it have to do with SEO? Well, it indicates that the company makes most of its profits in its core business, Google, meaning that they still have a stake in the game in helping direct its billions of users to the most valuable results.
Consequently, if you want to get a piece of that action, it is vital for you to up your SEO game to ensure that when a user types in a search query related to your business, you are sitting a the top of the results, ultimately garnering you more clicks which hopefully convert into paying customers. However, SEO has become far trickier than the heady days of yesteryear, when you could simply throw thousands of random links at a URL and watch the cash roll in. Nowadays, it takes finesse, patience, and a deep understanding of the sports of things that will actually move the needle. This post will take a deep dive into the actions you must take if you want to siphon business away from your competitors and establish your company as an industry leader.
Conduct Keyword Research To Ensure You Target Those Interested In Your Offerings
Keyword research is the pillar of any quality SEO campaign. It has been this way since the concept of a search engine came into existence, and while it might have changed cosmetically over the years, the fact remains the same. Time spent at this stage will yield extraordinary results as your campaign beings picking up pace. According to online marketing company GrowthBound Marketing, generating qualified leads is preferential to merely grabbing as many leads as possible. Simply put, this is because the better the leads you can generate, the more likely it is that you can turn them into sales. This is where your keywords are so crucial. For instance, if your business involves selling metal fabrication tools B2B, you want to avoid getting too many inquiries from DIYers looking to purchase a single device, etc. In that example, you would avoid keywords related to individuals and focus on those that a metal fabrication business might search for. Conversely, if you own an e-commerce store selling individual baking tools for amateur bakers, you might be unable to handle bulk orders if a large bakery came across your site and needed to kit out new premises. In many ways, this initial stage will make or break your campaign and dictate how you handle the tips in the rest of the post.
Improve The Structure Of Your Website By Adhering To Best Practices
Your site’s structure is a factor in SEO, though perhaps not as significantly as the others mentioned here. Nonetheless, if your site is tricky to navigate, slow to load, or simply looks ugly and unprofessional, you will inevitably lose customers. If you are operating on a shoestring, it can be galling to pay a website designer thousands to design you a site when you can throw one up on a WordPress installation. However, the money you spend on quality design (particularly regarding CTAs) will be repaid when users use your website and convert into customers.
Create And Publish Quality Content That Resonates With Your Intended Audience
Keyword research is about more than simply trying to rank your homepage. Instead, it will help you choose which topics to write about. Every site needs a blog section where they write about industry news, how they help their customers, and other interesting things related to the business. This content not only provides more opportunities for your site to rank, but it helps to position yourself as an expert in the industry, proving to your readers that their interests will be best served by choosing your company over others.
Links Still Count
You may or may not have read in various SEO-related publications that Google and other search engines are decreasing the clout they give to backlinks. While this is true to a certain extent, links still matter. What has changed is the quality and relevance of the links you acquire. As mentioned in the intro, webmasters could throw thousands of unrelated and weakly powered links at a site and watch it rise to the top of the SERPS in the past. Those days are not only long over, but doing so could actually irreparably damage your site and cause rankings to plummet (or even see your site deindexed). Instead, focus on acquiring the type of backlinks that naturally fit with your industry and ensuring they also have plenty of power to juice your own site up.
Nonetheless, this is more time-consuming than most people give it credit for, and it can often distract you from the real work of your company. Fortunately, there are plenty of link-building companies out there willing to do this work for a small fee. Simply make sure to select the best providers before handing over your money by reading reviews and using those that are suggested by leaders in the SEO industry.
Technical SEO Can Result In Easy Wins
If you thought link building was challenging, wait until you try your hand at technical SEO! That warning isn’t to put you off. On the contrary, a well-thought-out technical SEO audit can uncover some easy wins that can propel your site upwards with a few tweaks. However, just as with the previous point, it’s wise to hire a professional agency for this task as they will have the time, expertise, and propensity to optimize your website to the Nth degree.
Search engine optimization is such a vast topic that this post really can’t do it justice. Nevertheless, you can boil it down to keyword research, content, links, and technicals. If you are unsure about how to do these things, you can hire an SEO agency to perform the heavy lifting for you, allowing you to focus on your core competencies and do the business of running your business.