SEO, indeed, carries considerable clout. Search Engine Optimization is not a conjecture but a game-changing exercise. Businesses harness SEO for growth, and real-life examples show its real benefits. According to the best case studies that highlight how they used SEO for growth, it becomes evident that it is an exact structure that makes optimization a success, in other words, a well-planned SEO strategy. Instead of applying random practices adjusting strategic steps to your needs
- boost organic traffic to the page
- increase conversion rates
- engage new visitors with the content
- wins a favorable place on search engines
Awareness, expansion, and revenue are imminent after a well-planned SEO strategy. A well-planned SEO strategy goes hand in hand with growth. We can name SEO the most cost-effective and worthwhile digital marketing approach. Through optimization, a website becomes usable and visible at the same time.
Pedaling back to your well-planned SEO strategy, it is the process of crafting the actions to better the organic rankings on search engines. A well-planned SEO strategy can come in handy whenever there is a need to increase organic traffic to the website from the engines.
Learn the ten most effective “SEO for Growth” strategies
1. Analyze Google’s first SERP
Among the hundreds of pages on the world wide web, what SEO specialists and digital marketers care most about is the search engine results pages (SERP). It is not through their praying to Google for the high ranks but through analysis of the first SERP. The SERPs are the pages a user lands when searching for a particular keyword. Any optimization aims to “glean” a favorable position on the first SERP. These pages are flexing and modifying, thanks to optimization.
Conducting a SERP analysis is the first step in optimization. First, it gives insights into what is missing on the site for ranking. Secondly, it provides an idea of the competitor’s performance. Lastly, it helps identify ways to optimize the page content. When conducting Google’s first SERP analysis, you will
- examine your competitors’ websites
- generate keyword ideas
- define your content’s place
- find what searchers are looking for
There is no need to be puzzled about the process since multiple online tools will help you perform this analysis and gather information about competitors’ positions.
2. Pay attention to Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords
Latent Semantic Indexing keywords: What does this terming mean? you’d ask yourself. Let’s start by defining the terms. Latent Semantic Indexing keywords refer to keywords that are connected to the main keyword in terms of meaning. Hence, if your primary keyword is “new sushi restaurant”, LSI keyword examples will be “appetizer with fish”, “fish types for sushi”, “sushi types”, etc. These LSI keywords are descriptive words related to and designing the page content.
In general, Latent Semantic Indexing is an NLP (Natural Language Processing) technique that helps identify how words are related to each other contextually. Latent is for being hidden, and indexing is for understanding. This tech technique helps engines understand the page content and rank it according to relevancy.
When filtering out ranking keywords for content, you must identify your page’s Latent Semantic Indexing keywords and include those in the content marketing strategy. The relevancy of keywords incites a high ranking. Remember that paying attention to LSI keywords will give you new potential ranking keyword ideas and help engines understand what the page is about.
3. Optimize your “About” page
You have won the heart of the search engine, and the visitors have successfully landed on your webpage. It is time to win their hearts. The content on your web page is the guarantee you will win their hearts. It starts with optimizing your “about” page. Your visitors must know who you are and what you do. Introduce yourself! Tell about yourself to implant credibility. After all, it is your “about” page. To optimize your “about” page, key elements to pay attention to are:
- A headline summarizing who you are
- A sub-headline to further support the headline
- The benefits that visitors will get
- A hero image showing your face
- Your story that visitors can relate to
- A guiding call-to-action
- Consistent and impactful color selection
- Placement; put it second on the menu, after the “home” page
With all these core elements up your sleeves, you can ensure your “about” page is easy to find, read, and navigate. You should tail it up with the importance of on and off-page SEO and local SEO importance.
4. Update published date
Let’s test something. Open Google and search for something. Now, look at the dates of the result pages. Do you notice any articles from the 5th century? Well, what about from the 90s or 2000s? What’s noteworthy about search engines is the recency of the publication date. The algorithms are smart enough to show the first SERP’s most relevant and up-to-date information. You probably think, “I must publish content daily to rank high”. The bright side is you don’t need to publish every day, but you can update the published date and refresh your old content.
Yet, it is worth remembering that publishing some content and relying upon updating the dates within the next few years will not delude Google. To employ SEO for growth of your business, you need to invest in content marketing, set consistent posting dates, and regularly modify the old content. It implies checking the relevancy and ranking of your main keyword, updating the information, and adding new internal and external links. This way, your website will have a continual and fresh content flow.
5. Do the proper keyword insertion
We arrived at the most pivotal optimization component, i.e., keywords. SEO revolves around keywords. Apart from picking the right keywords, you also should be mindful of keyword insertion. Some think the more keywords they use in a piece of content, the better they will rank. However, stuffing is not a game-winner in SEO. Getting a Google penalty is around the corner if you engage in keyword stuffing. The right keyword insertion includes
- Determining main keywords and secondary keywords
- Placing the primary keywords in the page titles, meta descriptions, headings, subheadings, image descriptions, and alternative texts
- Inserting the primary keywords in the first paragraphs
- Using your LSI keywords across the content
- Using your LSI keywords instead of the main keywords for the URL for variation
Proper placement and a decent amount of keyword insertion significantly affect your website’s ranking status.
6. Transcribe videos and audio
Beyond keywords and links, there is more to workout SEO for growth of your website. Video marketing goes along with content marketing. According to the statistics, 86% of businesses use video marketing and 92% claim it is an “important part” of their marketing strategy. Video marketing itself is beneficial for the business; however, to take it a step further, transcribing videos and audio prove to be useful for optimization. Transcribing your videos will
- Make your content accessible to a broader audience range
- Create better indexable videos
- Insert links in the transcripts (link the promotional links or links to your other videos)
- Optimize your transcripts using keywords
Videos and audio can be transcribed both manually and using tools such as Rev, Sonix, and Scribe, or taking advantage of other applications’ functionality, like using Google’s auto-captioning, dictation software, Google’s voice command, etc.
7. Avoid duplicate content
One of the enemies of search engines is duplicate content across web pages. To start with, duplicate content is the exact same copy as a slightly modified copy on multiple pages. Duplicate content is adverse for many reasons and can even bring about penalties. Common problems include:
- Unfavorable search results
- Indexing issues
- Irresponsive main pages
- Degradation of ranking
You can take multiple steps to avoid duplicate content or others copying your content.
- Focus on creating unique quality content
- Organize your site’s structure assigning identical H1s to each page
- Use canonical tags in your technical SEO to ensure there is no duplicate content
- Add a “no index” meta robots to exclude pages from showing in the Google search results
- Avoid duplicate URLs
- Use redirects to eliminate duplicates. (Redirecting to the original link of the content)
Duplicate content can originate from technical issues or content stealing. Maybe someone is happily speeding up their organic traffic, relying on your authentic content. Your content is your responsibility. Therefore, you must be wary about hacking activities by signaling to Google the source was yours.
8. Outbound and Inbound linking
With Google getting smarter at ranking, keywords ceased being the single most important ranking factor. In reverse, if you practice keyword stuffing, you will earn a Google penalty instead. The modern-day Google appreciation is earned in case you have links, outbound and inbound. Links transport users between web pages. They can be in the form of texts, images, or clickable buttons. The links that direct to your site are inbound, whereas those that direct to another domain are outbound.
Links are a continual process and a powerful strategy to direct SEO for growth of your business. When you practice link building, you can analyze who links to your competitors and their broken links and aim to outpass the competition. Your lucky chances lie where your competitors fail.
9. Analyze competitors for insight
Let’s state clearly that SEO competitors are not necessarily competitors in business. Your competitors are those seeking to rank for the exact keywords as you. So, you vie for the same position on the Google SERP.
The next strategy to employ SEO for growth is conducting a competitor analysis. That is, figuring out who your competitors are, then delving deeper into the factors that make them competitive. You should identify their main target keywords, how they use content marketing, where their links come from, the topics they cover, etc.
Say you are managing an organic restaurant in the town. Your competitors seem to enjoy the flow of customers, and you wonder why the same customers do not visit your restaurant. Your well-planned SEO strategy is to visit the competitors yourself or send someone. The purpose is to find what makes them successful. You aim to discover the secret ingredient they are using. The same applies to optimizing your online domain. You analyze your competitors’ success factors and gain insights into what you are missing.
10. Acquire the SEO team
Keywords, content, links, competitors, tracking, and analyzing are too much to handle alone. If you want to employ SEO for growth, you need the SEO team. These are experts in their niche; having them on board, you will safely and quickly sail to the first Google SERP. The team should consist of a manager, web developer, content writers, outreach specialists, and link builders.
With the expert SEO team
- You will have control over your work and SEO strategy
- Everyone will be responsible for the task at hand
- No third parties will get involved
- You will save resources and time
Building the team, you will free yourself from extra cost and worry.
Wrapping up the SEO Strategies for Growth
SEO is a tricky game, along with the continual updates and changes. You must continually check the new techniques and tactics to win in the game. Yet, some things never change. Nothing can beat your expert crew or nail the content marketing strategy with fundamental keyword research. Relevancy and quality are always current in SEO.
This post discussed how you could succeed in optimization by leveraging the best practices and the skills of professional personnel. One thing to remember is that SEO results do not happen overnight. You should give search engines time to crawl and reach your content. Be patient with the optimization and wait for the statistics on your organic traffic. It takes time for the SEO magic to get into effect.
