If you’ve been in the business for some time, and you rely on your online presence to bring in some work, the chances are that you understand the basic concepts of SEO. However, SEO is constantly changing. The rules aren’t always the same, and this year also, they took a turn. If you want to learn more — you’ll want to dive into our tips for building a successful SEO strategy.
Right away, we’ll tell you what the changes are all about. In essence, you can no longer create content just for the keywords your customers are searching for. Of course, that doesn’t mean that keywords are gone, and you don’t have to do keyword research. On the contrary, they’re vital, but you’ll have to think about them more thoroughly.
Still, before we can tell you how to create the perfect strategy for this year, we need to go over what the SEO strategy is in the first place. If you know this already, you can skip the next paragraph and get right into the juicy stuff.
What Is an SEO Strategy?
SEO is a broad term, and it has many aspects. Still, to sum it up, SEO strategy is a set of tactics you should use to improve your rankings on search engines like Google and Bing. The better your strategy is, the more organic traffic you’ll get. In a perfect scenario, you won’t have to put any money into social media or PPC ads, and you’ll still get all the traffic and conversions you need.
Here are the biggest benefits of a good SEO plan:
- Quality organic traffic – Your website will attract people interested in what you offer, and you’ll sell more thanks to it. Play your cards right, and your conversion rate will go through the roof.
- Improved ROI – SEO is free if you do it yourself, so it has a far better return on investment than any paid advertising. That said, even if you hire experts to do it for you, you’ll get a higher ROI than with PPC.
- Better visibility – Your content, landing pages, and products will all be visible and easy to find online if your SEO is good. More people will know about your brand, so you’ll get better results no matter which marketing strategy you use.
- Improved brand trust – As we know, your customers need to trust you to buy from you. And ranking on the first page of Google is a good sign that they can trust you. It shows that you mean business, and they’ll be glad to know it.
SEO Tips
As we mentioned, SEO is a big topic. There are plenty of techniques, tactics, and strategies you can use. And if you’re new in all of it, it’s easy to get lost.
That said, no matter how much digital marketing trends have advanced in the last ten years, some things about SEO remain the same. Let’s go over them real quick, and then we’ll dive into specific tips for building a successful SEO strategy.
First off, technical optimization. It’s all about the basics, such as your website’s architecture, navigation, and loading speed. You want to provide a sitemap for search engines and make your site easy to use and snappy.
Second, off-page optimization. Here, we’re talking about optimizing your social media pages, YouTube videos, and backlinks. While videos aren’t necessary, you’ve got to have social and backlinks strategies.
And finally, on-site optimization. These are things you’re probably familiar with: keywords, tags, and linking.
Now that you know all the basics, let’s see what’s special about this year.
Keyword Research Still Matters
Keywords are the heart of SEO. They’ve always been, and they’ll be for a long time. However, you’ll have to learn how to look past them and figure out what your audience wants to read.
In essence, competition for short-tail keywords is far too vicious, so you need to go for the long-tail ones to rank well. Spend some time thinking about the content you can create that will genuinely help your customers. The more value you offer, the more people will read your posts, and the more they’ll trust you.
However, creating content the audience wants is just the first step.
Focus on Link Building
It’s great if your site visitors love what you’re doing. It’s the first step to getting to the top results on the SERPs. Still, to get there, you’ll have to work on your backlinks. These have been one of the critical ranking factors for years, but now, they’re even more powerful.
Of course, getting quality backlinks is the hard part. If you want to keep up with the times and go for the best practices, reach out to influencers in your niche. There are many advantages to influencer marketing, and that’s why so many marketers love to use it. People respond well to what influencers tell them, and immediately after they promote you, you’ll see results.
Think of Artificial Intelligence
AI brought many new things to the digital world, and now it’s about to change SEO. Google has recently released its AI algorithm named RankBrain. Although we don’t know much about it yet, experts predict that it’ll base its decisions on user experience.
If the predictions are accurate, your time spent on pages, click-through rates, and bounce rates will become the factors that matter the most. Hence, you’ll have to create content that readers will enjoy and keep them coming back for more if you want to stay on top.
Mobile-Friendliness for the Win
More and more people use mobile devices to search the web and even shop online. It’s why mobile marketing is one of the essential types of marketing to boost your business, but also why you have to make your site load fast and look good on smartphones and tablets.
On top of that, Google also cares about how your site looks and feels on mobile devices. When ranking your page, crawlers will first look at the mobile version, and if it’s not good, you won’t be able to rank at all.
So, if you haven’t already, this is the year to make your site mobile responsive. You’ll see a bump in traffic, and you’ll climb on the SERPs, just thanks to it.
The Bottom Line
SEO is complex, and to stay on top of everything, you’ll have to keep track of trends. To sum up the tips for building a successful SEO strategy, we’d say that you should focus on creating high-quality content and adjusting your website for an ideal user experience. If you can create a site that people will love, the chances are that Google will like it as well.
