You have spent a lot of money hiring an SEO consultant in hopes to increase your firm’s ranking in search engines, or maybe you have paid Google AdWords in hopes of better results and a higher return on your investment.
How is that working out for you?
With the internet at everyone’s fingertips, it is important to stand out from the mess of search results. Type in a word, phrase, or question and suddenly you have what appears to be endless resources to find the answer you are looking for.
You may also like: 5 Ideas for Quickly and Easily Updating Websites for SEO
Your firm should be in that top search when someone is looking for the answers that you have the ability to help them solve. If you think about it, when you search the internet, it is rare that anyone looks past the first page of results. Just like anything, the best results are normally on the first page in the top five results.
Your firm should be earning a gold, silver, or bronze placing when someone is taking to the time to search for information that you can deliver.
The importance of optimizing your SEO isn’t emphasized enough. Don’t just take my word for it - let me show you why.
- 70% of all mobile searches result in action within 1 hour of the search. (Mobile Marketing)
- 88% of adults in the U.S. have a cell phone, 57% have a laptop, and 19% have a tablet. (Source: Pew Internet)
- 91% of all U.S. citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7. (Source: Morgan Stanley)
These figures should be the drive you need to make your company’s website and inbound marketing stand out and earn the gold!
With so many people connecting mobily, there are far more opportunities to reach your target market than when the only options were billboards and television commercials.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fundamental technique and should be looked at as a goal per se, to strive for, when thinking about inbound marketing and managing your website.
There are several search engines out there, such as Google, Bing, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo, to name a few, so it is safe to see the importance of understanding and practicing good SEO.
It is time to figure out how to instantly improve your SEO.
The Search
What are search engines looking for?
Search engines want to do their jobs by referring users to websites with content that is most relevant to what that user is looking for.
Help these search engines do that job by having relevant content. Know what your title or interest of the reader you are trying to target is.
Content is determined by the theme given to the text on the page.
Titles and descriptions for the content help the search engines get your information out there.
The Goal
Communicate to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches.
You want your blog and your website to be on that first page of any search engine used.
The main objective is to have your web presence become more profitable for you and your company.
Avoid mistakes that will hurt the performance of your inbound marketing such as:
- Keyword overuse on your pages – more is not better for SEO.
- Purchasing links – this doesn’t help as much as you think it does.
- Poor user experience – too many ads and clutter will actually distract your viewers.
- Do not duplicate Meta descriptions.
The Strategy
Focus on your strategy. For strong SEO, this strategy should focus on content, performance, authority, and user experience.
This means you need to show the viewers who the expert is. Content should consist of 90% helpful tips and information, and 10% soliciting of your company’s product or services.
This type of strategy works because in the web world of business and marketing, the decision from a buyer is already made before they even hit your site 60% of the time.
So, make the most of the 40% you have left to influence and impress your viewer.
The Practice of SEO
Here is where you start to prepare for the performance. With these simple tips, you will be prepared for a great SEO performance.
Content should be in 1-3 sentence clusters. (Forget what your old English professor told you.)
Use keywords in your title and description.
Titles should be no more than 55 characters.
Implement links and anchor text.
Meta description should be concise and a maximum of 140 characters.
Focus on Meta data. Content on your site should have title tags and Meta descriptions. Follow the 140-character tip above and make sure the description is unique and speaks to that specific page.
A secret tip is use video to create rich media content. It is much easier to get a video to rank on the first page than a plain text page ranking.
You do not have to think of something different every time you create content or your website. Not only will this help you in the SEO but also this is a way to increase branding recognition.
The Performance
Before launching your site, take the time to review it.
Test how fast your site works, how well your blog reads, and the relevancy to what your audience is looking for.
What does your site look like?
Is your site easy to navigate for viewers? Let a colleague test it out and give constructive criticism.
Know your performance by looking at your bounce rate. This can also help guide you on what information to use on your site.
Think on the go! Think mobile! In other words, do not just focus on desktops or laptops. Thinking mobile means to consider how people use their smart phones, tablets, and e-readers.
Optimize the non-text content so search engines can find it. If the site you create uses Flash or PDF files, make sure you read on the latest best practices so search engines can crawl that content and give your site the proper credit for it.
You now have the base to go for the gold in placing yourself at the top in ranking for search engines.
Being found online comes down to creating relevant and insightful content. Content that is keyword-rich and helpful enough to generate an abundance of shares, likes, re-posts, and tweets will rise to the top of search engine results, in turn bringing your company more traffic and leads.
