SEO has a bad reputation. It is associated with low quality link farms, spamming and search engine manipulation. The reputation comes from charlatan marketers who try to find the loopholes in search engines rather than create high quality content for search engine users. It is no wonder that website owners say they give up in trying to play the SEO lottery!
As hopeless as it may seem, SEO is still a highly effective way to promote your website. You will need to survive the search engine updates as well if you don’t want to be penalized. Here are the best tips to improve your SEO in light of search engine changes:
1.Define your SEO goals
Effective SEO is different for every website online. Some websites just want sales whereas others want visitors to subscribe. The action you want website visitors to take defines the SEO strategy that you will use. You will then define the method, measurement tools and timeframe to achieve it. Defining your SEO goals will keep you on track no matter what the algorithm updates are on Google.
2.Write for your website visitors
What website will be more successful? The one that writes to help their website visitors or the one that tries to manipulate search engines for top ranking? In an age of semantic and user centric SEO, your website SEO content has to serve your website visitors. You need to research their common pain points, frequently asked questions and the cluster of semantically relevant words to use on your website. It may even help your website visitors to install a search bar on the landing page so they can find what they are looking for. So often, website owners forget to used relevant words in their content.
3.Design for your website visitors
Website visitors of the future will access the Internet using different devices; you need to optimize your website for mobiles, smartwatches and any new wearables in the marketplace. You need to make sure that your website UX is good-this will increase the usefulness of your website.
4.Optimize your brand for the internet
Website visitors access information through all kinds of channels and search keywords. They may find review sites useful or videos helpful before they make a purchasing decision. You will need to see which channels are funnelling your website visitors and focus on those to maximize conversions. Review sites are becoming more important to consumers; you may want to optimize your brand on there.
- Research your SEO competitors
Unless they are major news websites, you too, can achieve a ranking like your SEO competitors. Research their choice of keywords and backlinks, anchor text ratios and website UX. There are several tools for you to use to unearth what SEO tactics they are using. If there is a landing page, video or blog that they have ranked well for, dissect their content and choice of keywords.
- Diversify to survive
Imagine how scary it would be if your website disappears from search results. Voice search retrieving relevant content can soon replace SERPs altogether. To diversify your search marketing and lessen the risks, you should link to other websites, other social media profiles and big authoritative sites. By sharing good quality content on a diversity of websites, you can minimize the risk of disappearing.
- Become too valuable to ignore
Produce the kind of content that many websites would be proud to link to and you are on to a winning formula. Once you establish your website as a valuable source of information, attention will flow to you effortlessly. This saves you a lot of time and effort in gaming the system.
8.Find a data driven and creative SEO consultant
Many website owners hire SEO consultants to stay competitive and one step ahead. The best SEO consultants have tools to measure their SEO and content marketing efforts as well as finding ways to develop your content for long term success.
