SEO is one of the most important marketing techniques for any digital marketing campaign. It is one of the essential tools to achieve better results and rankings on search engines and improve traffic to your site. There are many elements to SEO so you need the help of an SEO expert company to keep up with the latest techniques and trends. In the early online days, a website could rank higher in search engines whether the search terms were relevant or not, how times have changed. Search engines like Google which didn’t exist 20 years ago, have caught on and have changed and refined their algorithms to favor high-quality sites and content. Google is smarter and more powerful than ever before. Online competition is growing on a daily basis. So, let’s look at how SEO can increase your website traffic.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation. It is a unique process of improving the quantity and quality of your site traffic to a site or web page from search engines such as Google. SEO can increase your site visibility for relevant searches. The better your site visibility the more your site will attract potential new customers. SEO is made up of multiple elements and knowing what they are is significant for your business to succeed online.
The higher your online business ranks on search engines the more likely users will see you and click through your site. When your traffic increases your visibility and rankings will follow. The first 5 listings get over 75% of clicks and nearly 33% of clicks go to the first ranking page.
The authority of your site simply means your site is trustworthy, relevant, high quality, and has something to offer. The more authority your site has the more people will trust you and the higher your rankings will be online.
With all the optimizing of your site and creating quality content, this will create a positive and seamless customer experience. Your site must be user-friendly and responsive when people visit your site from all devices like mobile phones, desktops, laptops, and tablets.
Keyword Research
One of the most basic SEO tactics is your keyword research. Google is always evolving and so is its algorithm. Its main objective is to understand the intention of its users, what they are looking for, what they expect, and what search results would be best to answer their question. Keywords are what customers type in to find products and businesses. A strong keyword strategy focuses on attracting customers at the top of the sales funnel who are just doing research and customers at the bottom who are ready to make a buying decision. Keywords should be included in your meta descriptions, body copy, and title and header tags.
Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are questions and phrases that users type into the Google search engine. You should use keywords that are more related to your service or product. Long-tail keywords are a great way to get in front of potential customers in turn capturing traffic to your site. A blog is an ideal place to focus on long-tail keywords where you have more room to build trust and offer value from your brand.
Optimization On-Site
Once you have your keywords set and understand the keywords that your customers use to find your business, optimizing your website is an essential step. Metadata is telling Google exactly what you are talking about. It is simple but very effective. Website optimization to increase rankings covers many areas, these include:
Meta Description
The Meta description is the text that appears below the clickable link in search engine results. A meta description must be entered otherwise Google will pull wording directly from your site which may not be correct.
Title Tags
Title tags appear in the search results as the description of your page. Title tags should use focus keywords. They also appear within the tab of your webpage.
Content
SEO and content go together, and one can’t be without the other. For your site to rank well you need quality content. Search engines like Google can’t read like a human, however, they can look for signals to determine if the content on your site is worth reading by those who search online. Create long quality content that will provide useful and relative information for the visitors to your site.
Blog Posting
Writing a blog for your site is a great way of creating long-length content. The more keywords you rank the more potential traffic and consumers that will visit your site. If you have a website and a blog the more opportunities, you create for organic traffic to come to your site.
Internal Linking
Your blog posts, articles, and web pages will be related so whenever possible you can link this content together. If you have written a post about a certain topic, you can link it to an earlier post and vice versa. Internal linking will guide visitors to more relevant content. It will keep visitors on the site for longer which helps boost your search rankings and traffic.
Off-Site SEO
Off-Site SEO is one of the most important parts of any online marketing campaign. If you want to rank on Google search engine you must look beyond your site. It is one of the most desired outcomes in succeeding. Off-site is mainly about link building. Site linking works like a voting system for its quality and content. Off-site also includes content marketing, social media, brand building, citation building, and much more.
Link Building
Link building is one of the most popular marketing techniques. Choose quality links over quantity. One of the main goals is to build your business authority. Links from authority websites will help position your site as an authority. A vote from one site to another. Primary factors to consider with link building include:
Authority
Page authority is a clear indication of your site status and overall SEO tactics. Authority score is the compound domain score that will grade the overall quality of a site and will tell you how impactful a backlink from a site can be. The score is based on several factors, these include:
- Number of referring IPs and quantity of referring domains
- Organic search traffic (from organic positions report)
- The domains quality and quantity of backlinks
- User number
- Follow vs no-follow links
Unique Domains
One of the key metrics to link building is the number of linking root domains that are pointing to your site, even above the number of links pointing back to your site. Studies have shown the correlation between the higher rankings and the number of linking domains. The backlink analytics tool can be used to check the number of unique domains.
The main reason you need SEO is to help achieve your business goal. SEO can help increase your authority, build relationships with your audience, improve customer experience, drive traffic to your site, give you an edge over your competition and increase conversions. Every aspect of SEO means more sales, more loyal customers, and more growth for your business. SEO involves many different practices, techniques, and tactics.