Through hundreds of algorithm changes, search engine optimization and the various techniques marketers use to rank have been an important factor in marketing strategies for many years. That definitely hasn’t changed in 2020.
For example, here are some interesting SEO marketing statistics.
- 4 out of 5 shoppers go to Google for local information
- 94% of all web traffic is organic
- 61% of marketers say improving their SEO and organic presence is their top inbound
marketing priority - 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
It is clear that you can’t ignore SEO if you want to grow an online brand or business. Just like the past, SEO is ever-changing and marketers are challenged with going beyond the vague advice of basic strategies of just writing good content and building backlinks. To boost your SEO strategy, you need to learn and implement the techniques that work today. Even strategies that worked like a charm a year ago could get you site penalized today.
It is clear that you can’t ignore SEO if you want to grow an online brand or business.
Check out these 6 SEO techniques you can utilize to boost your marketing efforts.
1. Improve Your Website
Poor web design and slow loading speeds can result in site visitors clicking the back button and going over to your competitor. As a result, your bounce rates will start to go up. Although it isn’t officially stated, Google might look into bounce rates when ranking sites. Google itself looks to provide users with searches that best match their queries. Even if you carefully perform your keyword research and write quality content, you’ll find it hard to rank without a quality website to match. Check out some of the websites we worked with at Hawaii Web Design. You can lower your bounce rate by improving your user experience using the following tips:
- Make posts more readable with shorter sentences, bullet points, and headers.
- Write content that is informative, has compelling ideas and is well-written.
2. Optimize for Voice Search
More and more searches are conducted by voice (through devices such as Alexa and Siri) instead of typing. Since voice searchers have different behaviors than traditional ones, you’ll have to factor those differences into your search strategy. For example, a text search is often shorter while voice searches are likelier to be in longer-tail form. Voice searches are also likely to be question phrases. Optimize for voice search by:
- Writing your content around long-tail keywords and phrases that your users are likely to search for.
- Using the cluster model method to satisfy user intent and target Google Snippets (which is content read by the device when a search has been conducted).
3. Write and Refresh Longer Content
Longer content often (but not always) performs well in terms of traffic when it comes to certain kinds of topics. For general topics (such as an overview of content marketing), longform content can be very informative to a visitor. However, a visitor looking for a simple pros and cons article on strategy might want a shorter, more concise post.
After considering what content length is suitable for each topic, you can think about repurposing existing content and increasing the word count. If you have a well-performing, older post that is 1000 to 1200 words you can update the content with new material and content and bring the word count up. With this technique, you are capitalizing on the authority of an old post that still gets views while drawing in new traffic by refreshing the post.
4. Write With Humans in Mind
Yes, search engines are important and you should definitely keep them in mind when writing content. However, the main audience for your writing are humans as people are the driving engine behind brands and businesses and are the ones who will purchase your products. Keep your content readable. If a trending keyword doesn’t fit cleanly within an article or blog post, exclude it and focus on writing quality content about topics readers want to know about. If you aren’t sure want your audience may want to read about (or are starting to run out of ideas), go on social sites like Quora and Reddit to see what people are talking about.
5. Think About Local Search
If you are a local business, then the statistics above about the internet habits of local consumers might have interested you. You can capitalize on local search queries by optimizing your site. Make sure your address and phone number is prominently on display. Add a Directions section or page that includes major landmarks near your business. Lastly, list your site in local directories such as CitySearch and Yelp.
6. Conduct an SEO Audit
Are your SEO techniques actually working? Not getting as much traffic as you’re used to seeing? You should look into conducting an SEO audit. Auditing is a common technique used by marketers and agencies to examine the current state of your SEO and help you attract more customers.
Start by reviewing your site for the following:
- Are your URLs optimized? URLs should be short and simple.
- Are meta titles and descriptions present for all of the pages on your site? This meta data is used by search engines to preview your page’s content to searchers.
- Are there 301 redirects that need to be addressed?
- Are keywords used effectively? Keyword stuffing can get your site penalized while a lack of keywords can mean that you are losing out on potential traffic.
- Do your images have keywords in their Alt tags?
Those are just a few of the areas you should be looking at when conducting your own audit. Fixing these issues can boost your SEO and traffic. Want us to do it for you? Check out our Hawaii SEO page for more details!
Conclusion
Implementing these SEO techniques takes work and the willingness to adopt new strategies in a landscape that seems like it is constantly changing. However, embracing these changes can not only help give your brand the leverage it needs to start climbing the search engines, it can encourage you to find new ways to deliver value and information to your audience.
If you liked this blog and thought it could help someone out, feel free to give it a share, and check out our website at Hawaii Web Design for more helpful tips to help set you up for success!
