Did you know that as of 2017, 45% of small business still don’t have a website?
For those that do have websites, if they’re not promoting the website online, they’re wasting a large investment and missing out on a key opportunity to get more leads.
About 93% of online experiences begin on search engines (like Google). And 75% of searchers don’t scroll past the first page.
Without an SEO strategy, you can forget about increasing your site traffic. Then let’s not forget most people today are conducting searches on mobile devices.
Why is that important? Because 30% of mobile searches are location-based. And 50% of mobile users who conduct local searches visit a nearby location within a day.
It’s time to improve your SEO campaign.
1. Set Realistic Goals for Your SEO Campaign
The worst thing you can do for your SEO strategy is to set vague and unrealistic expectations. This will only set your campaign up for failure.
The purpose of goals is to define the success of your campaigns. Then you’ll need to know how to measure the progress to ensure you meet goals.
Sure, you want to rank high on Google, but it takes a more defined goal to get there. There are key questions you have to answer to figure this out.
The Who
Who exactly are you trying to reach in your SEO campaign? This will set the foundation for the keywords and topics you choose.
If you don’t have an answer, it’s time to do some research. Take a look at your customer base or the group you’d like to target. Then develop marketing personas for each group.
This way, you can create segmented campaigns that cater to each customer. For example, the content and message you use for the elderly market should differ from the ones you use for the teenage market.
The Why
Now it’s time to figure out why you’re drawing these people to your website. What is it you want them to do once they arrive?
Don’t focus so much on vanity metrics – i.e. traffic and engagement. If people aren’t converting, then your SEO campaign isn’t winning.
Set goals that will allow you to achieve real results. For instance, building your email list, generating more leads and increasing sales.
The How
Tools are needed to allow you to measure the progress of the goals you’ve set. Google Analytics is a great platform to monitor just about everything.
Some of the metrics you want to watch include conversion rates, traffic sources, ad re-targeting results, and email list growth.
If you’re struggling with measuring goal progress, then it’s time to make better-defined goals.
2. Analyze Your Current Setup
If you already have a website, it’s time to analyze it. You want to ensure your website sets a solid foundation for your SEO campaign.
Let’s review what you need to do.
The Website Platform
What type of platform are you using for your website? Is it outdated? An example of a modern platform is WordPress. It’s fast, secure and very easy to optimize for search engines.
If you’re not already using WordPress, it’s a good idea to switch over now. It’ll save you the headache of acquiring coding knowledge to maintain and optimize your site.
The Website Design
There are various ways your website design can help or hurt user-friendliness. If your site design and structure is confusing, then your bounce rate will soar.
The idea is to develop a design that’s clean and familiar. Place navigation buttons in a visible location. And make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
It’s also important for SEO to have a responsive design. Mobile-friendliness is a big deal to Google and other search engines.
If you are switching over to WordPress, you can find simple templates to use. Or better yet, you can hire a developer to design a custom theme for your site.
The Sources of Traffic
Check to see where your current sources of traffic stem from. You can go to Google Analytics to view this metric. It will determine how well your organic search campaigns are doing.
If it’s not doing so well, then you’ll need to make some tweaks. Then you can consider capitalizing on the other sources to boost traffic even more.
3. Conduct Keyword Research
You don’t have an SEO campaign without a solid list of keywords to use. Obviously, you want to select keywords your audience is using. Ones that are highly-targeted will weed out the cold leads from the hot.
You can use Google Keyword Planner to find keywords for your campaign. Opt for low-competition keywords to keep your budget down and boost your chances of ranking high.
It’s also important to hone in on search intent. Today, Google is smart enough to understand the intent of users. For instance, whether a search using “Apple” is about fruit or a computer.
There are three reasons people conduct searches. Let’s review them:
- To learn more about a topic (what is, how do I, etc.)
- To evaluate options (best products, best solutions, etc.)
- To complete an action (purchase, download, etc.)
As you’re coming up with your keyword list, it’s important to keep user intent in mind. After all, this will drive much of the content you create.
Also, knowing the intent of users helps you understand their position in the customer journey. For example, searchers using terms like “how to” and “what is” are still in the beginning stage.
The content you create using these terms should help educate your audience. For example, there are those looking for the top products or solutions who ready to make a purchase but aren’t sure which to choose.
In this case, you create content that explains the differences in products or services they’re interested in.
For the ones who are ready to purchase, you create landing pages that talk about the benefits of your product or service. Make sure to include calls to action.
4. Conduct an SEO Audit for Your Website
Search engine optimization isn’t just about your blog content and landing pages. It’s also necessary to optimize your on-site SEO.
This consists of a technical breakdown of your site’s SEO. For example, whether you have an XML sitemap for search engine bots to easily crawl and rank your pages.
Then there’s the page speed factor. The faster your pages load, the more search engine bots and visitors will like your website.
Keywords should also be present in your meta tags. This includes your page titles, descriptions and ALT text for photos.
Then on the negative side, you have to check for and eliminate non-indexable pages, canonical issues, and 404 redirects.
5. Create Incredible Content
In the past, online marketers developed content solely for tricking search engines. They stuffed keywords in their pages in order to get high rankings in search engine page results (SERPs).
As you may remember, this type of content is horrible to read and looks unprofessional and spammy. Thankfully, Google rolled out updates like Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird, which eliminated this issue.
Now, Google is smarter and will penalize sites that use black hat SEO like keyword stuffing. The idea is to write content for people, not search engines.
Here’s a quick breakdown of planning out the content for your SEO campaign.
Keyword Usage
Each page or blog post should consist of relevant keywords from your campaign. Try to focus on at least one main keyword and one or two others that relate to the topic.
The keywords should flow into your content naturally and read well. Place them throughout the content – in the beginning, middle and end. And have them in your titles and subheadings as well.
Quality and Value
What makes your content high-quality and high-value? It’s about addressing topics your audience cares about. And presenting it in an easy-to-digest manner.
It’s better to write a long blog post that’s filled with lots of insights and actionable advice. Stay away from short, thin, and fluffy pieces.
The better your content, the easier it’ll be to get backlinks for it. And this too will give your SEO campaign a boost.
Using Links
Speaking of links, it’s good to place internal links in your content and pages as well. This helps users navigate your site easier.
Place links to your other related blog posts in your content. And in landing pages, include direct links to the product or service.
But don’t be stingy. Make sure to include external links to quality resources your visitors can use. Just stay away from competitors’ site. You don’t want all your hard work wasted by sending your traffic to your competition.
Inserting Images
Text alone is boring and dry. Include images inside of your blog content, website pages and definitely your product pages.
Include ALT text that’s optimized with relevant keywords. This way, your graphics suit both your visitors and search engine bots.
Improve Your SEO Campaign Today!
Growing your organic traffic is easier when you enlist the assistance of experts. The professionals at Improve & Grow provide businesses with the tools to make their SEO excel.
Our services include all the ingredients needed for the recipe for success. This includes strategy development, building traffic, generating leads and engaging users.
We use a combination of content marketing, PPC marketing, and social media marketing to boost visibility.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can improve your SEO campaign!
