Given the stiff competition in the market, visibility is a top concern for business owners. No matter how good your product or service is, your profitability will be hampered unless you advertise and increase your visibility to your target customers.
Considering we get most of our information from a “Google Search,” being listed on the search engine and among the top searches is one of the most wide-ranging ways. Only 1% will visit the second page of Google. Ranking on the top of Google Searches can lead to a 39.8% click-through rate.
This forms the basic idea behind search engine optimization or SEO.
Introduction
The SEO process ensures that the search engine can interpret your content easily, linking search terms to keywords used on your website and ensuring your website is among the top results.
Sounds complex? It’s not.
Each website published targets certain people and lists specific products or services (or both). Identifying terms for said products are your keywords. The Search Engines recognizes these keywords whenever a query is made and displays the relevant websites. With the help of optimum keywords, images, and more, Search Engines will list your site on top of the results, thus directing organic traffic.
The benefits include:
- Higher organic traffic
- Creating a user friendly interface
- Better client engagement
- Establishing the authority of your website
46% of those in digital marketing agree that the use of SEO tactics can result in better content marketing.
Understanding Your Audience
When setting up a business, understanding your customers is key. The same is true for a website. If you know your clients, you can set the tone of your website accordingly. Your website, and in turn your business, will only be successful if the people you are targeting are able to understand and relate to it.
In the case of B2B, almost 27% research products independently before buying. Thus, those catering to the B2B market stand to gain 2x revenue from organic search traffic. Further, for e-commerce sites, 33% of traffic comes from organic searches.
Make use of demographics and target your clients to drive engagement.
Keyword Research for SEO and Relevance
Keywords act as markers whenever a query is raised. Using a term that is rarely searched for as a keyword does not help your website. This makes keyword research essential. Posts and webpages that use keywords have a 45% higher click-through rate.
With keyword research and by using the right keywords, you get:
- An insight into what is trending and what is not
- Increases the relevance of your site
- Helps grow client traffic and acquire new customers
However, using keywords is not all. While they are important, they are useful only when aligned with the right topic and used in a relevant context and in a manner that establishes authority. 94.74% of all keywords used for SEO purposes get around 10 searches a month. This points to a clear gap between user intent and its understanding by businesses.
Crafting High-Quality, User-Focused Content
While your website is designed to be centered around your business, it is always targeted towards your customers. Though having multiple CTAs and ads helps, having too many of these does more harm than good. It clutters the page and leads to confusion as the user is deafened by the background noise.
In contrast, it is better to have engaging content that talks about your business, products, services, and what your clients gain by choosing you. By combining these with CTAs, your website will have a far better impression on your clients. Further, this can also increase brand awareness.
To add, when paired with images, people tend to retain 65% of the information that is provided.
The below steps can help you create high quality custom content:
- Learn more about your audience via analytics, surveys, polls, etc.
- Conduct detailed research in terms of competitor content, relevant keywords, client data, and statistics.
- Create headers and USPs that grasp the attention of your audience
- Make your content easy to read and understand
- Images, charts, and tables can simplify key parts of your material
- Optimize it for SEO with relevant keywords, meta, backlinks, and alt texts
- Increase client engagement with interactive content and CTAs
- Make sure to proofread before uploading
- Update your content regularly
On-Page SEO Essentials
Strategies that help boost your rankings are termed on-page SEO. These make your website easy to navigate plus improve your brand’s image, making it trustworthy.
Websites are ranked on the basis of
- Experience,
- Expertise,
- Authoritativeness, and
- Trustworthiness
Thus, you need to ensure the below for your website:
- Have the right content
- Use optimized keywords with a moderate to high search volume
- Apply SEO best practices to your content
- Keep your content updated and data accurate
- Use visual tools (graphics and images), interactive sections, and CTAs to increase engagement
- Use the right title tags, headers, and meta descriptions
- Optimize your images to be platform friendly
- Include Alt tags for images
- Geo tag for local traffic
- Direct traffic using inbound, internal, and outbound links.
- Improve your site speed
- Create a responsive design
Once you do the above, go through your website and conduct an SEO audit. Work on areas that need to be edited like updating meta tags, descriptions, and URLs. Add and edit to increase relevance, and review content periodically.
Improving Content Structure for User Experience (UX)
Not just text, but images also act as content. To improve user experience, this content needs to be presented in a manner that is clear, concise, and interactive. Additionally, this should target the two main parameters:
- Increasing client engagement
- Improving brand awareness
Having a content strategy that focuses on user experience (UX) provides:
- Clarity about the products
- Consistency among pages
- A personalized touch
- A navigational guide to the user
Devise a strategy for a better UX by following the below steps:
- Know your audience
- Create a structure that maintains an organic and logical flow
- Use a tone that suits your client base
- A more formal tone for professional or medical services and others
- A casual and conversational tone for services and goods that target the layman
- Edit, update, and design content to present it in a manner that is easy to understand and accurate.
Enhancing Engagement with Interactive Elements
From a user point of view, we visit multiple websites whenever we search for anything online. However, we spend barely a minute on each website until we land on the one we like.
This is better termed as “Bounce Rate”. A high bounce rate indicates more number of users leaving your site. In contrast to using “Bounce Rate” as a performance marker is “Dwell Time”. Dwell time acts as a direct indicator that clients are spending time on your website, thus improving your SEO ranking. A low bounce rate and high dwell time indicates that your page is of higher quality.
By applying the below ideas for interactive content, you can improve your dwell time:
- Have multiple CTAs and spread them out throughout your page
- Use dynamic content that makes your users revisit your website
- Develop and deploy chatbots
- Upload infographics and visual content
- Try putting up polls and quizzes periodically
- Make forms interactive
- Use leaderboards, badges, and a reward system if relevant
Optimizing for Mobile Users
9 out of 10 internet users access websites via their phones. Further, 70% of people use mobile phones for online shopping, whether using websites or apps. Even if a portion of your users are using their laptops or PCs, it is important to make sure your website is mobile friendly.
The key elements include:
- A responsive design that adjusts itself based on the screen type
- A faster load time
- Mobile friendly navigation
- Optimizing content, design, and performance
The benefits of mobile optimization include:
- A better user experience
- More client traffic and engagement
Leveraging Content Refresh for SEO and Engagement
Updated content factors directly into your website’s relevance. Search Engines are designed to provide the most recent information first to their users, followed by all others. Thus, uploading new and better content is the key to staying on top of the leaderboard.
These may include:
- Recent surveys and related data
- Blogs to increase customer awareness
- Using the top trending keywords
Steps to follow when refreshing your content include:
- Gain insights into your website using analytics and track your client traffic
- Use keywords that have a high search volume in the content you are uploading
- Identify your competitors and top performing pages and look into how their strategies
- Add internal links and media
A top question is how frequently should we take up this exercise. Not each website is targeted towards the same clients. What we can do is monitor the site’s traffic and analytics regularly and update content whenever a slight drop is seen.
Monitoring and Measuring Success
The first thing to monitor a website’s performance is engagement metrics. This accounts for
- How many people are visiting your website
- Time spent on your website
- If they visit any other page
- If they engage with the interactive content present
- The frequency with which they visit your website
- Revenue generated by your website
Some metrics to monitor include:
- Views
- Time spent on average
- Dwell time
- Bounce rate
- Pages per session
- Visitor sessions
- Devices being used to access your website
- Top pages
- Top exit pages
- Revenue attribution
By monitoring your website’s performance you can identify areas that need work, pages that need to be revamped, and clients that you need to target in order to increase revenue.
Conclusion
With tens of thousands of live websites available, you need to identify what drives users to your portal and makes them look twice at its contents.
While a competitive analysis can be helpful, it needs to be worked on with tools that increase your visibility. Here’s where SEO comes in handy. By making sure your website is on top of the search lists, you have the opportunity to draw a larger number of visitors.
However, just people visiting your website is not enough. It is important that they look at your content, feel their importance, and avail of your services. By taking a comprehensive approach to SEO tools, make sure your website is user friendly, engaging, and factors significantly into your revenue.