ExecutiveChronicles | How Strong Is Your SEO Game? 12 Fundamentals of a Winning SEO Strategy | One of the ways businesses are able to get consistent leads and customers is due to people finding their content. Some of these business owners can tell you that they’ve accomplished that without spending a dime. This is thanks to their SEO strategy.
If you want organic traffic and to cut your marketing costs, you should be investing in SEO. SEO is the only way to position your business where entire search engine users can quickly find it. Make sure your SEO game is strong by learning these 12 fundamental factors of a successful SEO game plan.
1. Clean and Organized Code
Think of how web crawlers find your content when reinforcing your SEO strategy. Your website is a library of pages. Google must understand what each page contains before ranking it.
A page is likely to rank higher on search engine results if web crawlers and indexers find it. And you must follow the best SEO coding practices to make your web pages findable. Follow practices that allow Google to crawl and index your website.
A significant part of making your website indexable involves creating a sitemap. A sitemap speeds up indexing by showing web crawlers which direction they can or not go. Crawlers use the sitemap to learn everything about your site.
Proper site mapping or organizing of code is like formatting a textbook. It enhances readability by creating a hierarchical structure that eases crawling and indexing. The more you allow for indexing, the more your SEO performance is likely to improve.
2. Navigable or User-Friendly Site Architecture
Once you complete optimizing code for crawlers, think about your users. They need to find the information they want in the shortest time possible. You need to make your website navigable to ease the accessibility of the various pages.
Poor navigation is one of the major causes of high bounce rates on a website. Many people will leave your website if they’re not able to find what they want fast. To increase dwell times, work on your site structure.
View your website as your home. You’d want your guests to learn the layout so they can define different rooms with a lot of ease. Likewise, your site structure should make life easier for your users.
3. Optimization for Mobile
Mobile optimization dominates SEO conversations. Mobile searches make up 60% of all search volume. If you seek SEO wisdom from Direction, they’ll recommend a mobile-first website.
An SEO strategy without mobile optimization is incomplete. Google went mobile-first indexing from July 2019. They focus on the mobile version of content during crawling and indexing. Instead of using desktop crawlers, they now use smartphone agents or bots.
It also makes sense to optimize for mobile since the majority of your audience is mobile. A mobile-first design boosts marketing─ you get to pick a larger yet specific audience. Learn how to optimize your site for mobile if you’re still behind the times.
4. Relevant Keywords
If you’re building your SEO content strategy, you may wonder why you need keywords. Keywords can ensure your content fits your niche and suits your audience. Relevant keywords will attract the right audience and generate higher engagement.
Your keywords also determine your search engine rankings. Users will only find your website if your content matches their search queries. Relevant keywords help your site to rank on top of your prospects’ search queries.
You need to get into your audiences’ shoes to understand what they want. Only by understanding their thought pattern can you decipher their search intent.
Use the best keyword research tools to find competitive, relevant keywords. This is the way to understand your audience and create helpful content.
5. Fast Loading Speeds
Building a quick-loading website is necessary for the success of your SEO strategy. A fast-loading website boosts engagements by easing accessibility. It improves user experience and sends positive signals to search engines.
If a web page loads endlessly without displaying any results, it can be super annoying. Many users will leave a slow-loading website without a second thought. Slow websites can hurt user experience and negatively affect SEO performance.
Remember to test your site’s speed. Look at its performance and the bottlenecks hampering its speed. Then make all the necessary improvements to avoid bad SEO results. Google factors in site speed when determining web search rankings
6. Attractive and Easy to Read Pages
An SEO strategy should go hand in hand with web design. This is because your web visitors have to like your website aesthetics to stay or return.
An attractive, readable site is the foundation of a successful eCommerce SEO strategy. Brands that focus on both aspects gain opportunities to attract and convert more traffic.
Complement SEO with an appealing color scheme and typefaces. Add eye-catching images and exciting videos to your pages to boost your site’s appearance. Good visuals can transform dull pages and make your content readable.
Beyond that, think about readability when creating content. Make use of white space to make your pages readable and scannable. The majority of web visitors scan pages before reading.
7. Local SEO
Many customers do a local search before finding your store. Your best customers could be within walking distance away of your business. Your relationship with them is likely to be strong because you primarily interact face to face.
46% of Google searches are looking for local information. So, integrating a local SEO into your strategy should be a no-brainer. Your community is more likely to search and find your business than online customers.
Local SEO is more specific and is likely to attract more organic traffic than general SEO. It helps you to stand out in your community instead of competing with top companies.
Use location-specific keywords and links to local businesses to boost local SEO. Create and optimize your Google My Business pages for SEO to increase the likelihood of ranking for local search queries.
8. High-Quality Backlinks
High-quality backlinks can bring a tremendous SEO impact to your website. Search engines will believe your website is valuable when many authority sites link to it. An SEO backlink strategy is a must-have when you want to improve your search engine rankings.
Brian Dean of Backlinko recommends using HARO as the first step in an SEO backlink strategy. This is a free tool that helps you to connect people that need blog linking sources. You should find ways of making authority sites and blogs want to link to your site.
9. Quality Content
A good SEO strategy attracts traffic. You should be able to empower and impact the lives of your visitors with your content. But it takes quality content to keep and convert visitors.
The central goal of your website is to boost audience interactions and engagements. You want them to access your business and learn more about your products. High-quality content decodes your products and reinforces your messaging.
When creating content, you must ensure it meets Google EAT standards. Google expects your site to show a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
10. An Updated SEO Optimized Blog
Companies that blog attract 67% more leads per month. And updating a blog can increase traffic by 106%. An updated and SEO-optimized blog should be part of your SEO strategy.
Blogging gives you more bandwidth to sprinkle more keywords into your website. It allows you to include more related keywords in your strategy. This makes your site more SEO-friendly.
Blogging is an opportunity to get to the root of your customers’ problems. You can create in-depth blog posts to answer the commonly asked questions in your niche.
Blogging is an engagement tool. Interesting blogs can boost dwell times and send positive signals to search engines. Most new users will concentrate on your blog posts before heading to buy or join your community.
11. Social Media Integration
Social media signals may not impact your SEO straightaway. But your SEO benefits after you put your content in front of many internet users. Social sharing of content results in more backlinks, increased traffic, and brand mentions.
Your brand can become popular and earn the favor of Google and other search engines. Google boosts your ranking if people search for your brand or other non-branded versions of your keyword. Social sharing encourages brand mentions and taggings which can act as non-branded keywords.
12. Proof of Security or Credibility
You should build a safe website for your users for long-term SEO success. It takes immense hard work to rank your pages on the top of SERPs. You don’t want to waste your efforts with a site that looks low quality or is vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Part of an eCommerce SEO strategy is building credibility. People can only trust you with their credentials if your site appears safe and credible. Secure your website with a reliable SSL certificate to gain your users’ trust.
Does Your SEO Strategy Comprise All These Components?
Building a successful SEO strategy takes time and resources but it’s always worth it. Take your time to build a strategy that comprises all the fundamentals. Remember that SEO is one of the best routes for playing the long game so this won’t happen overnight.
Be patient with your strategy and continue to test different methods to find what works for you. For more tips and advice on marketing, check out the rest of our blog.
ExecutiveChronicles | How Strong Is Your SEO Game? 12 Fundamentals of a Winning SEO Strategy
