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SEO guide for businesses

What makes SEO attractive to businesses?

  1. It’s free â€“ If you have any experience in online marketing or advertising, you know that running ads on places like Google and Facebook can get expensive. However, after your site is SEO optimized, there is no ongoing expense.
  2. It’s consistent  – Once you get a high ranking for your page and site, you can expect organic traffic every month without paying a monthly bill. Since search traffic results from users actively searching for information, the number of searches for a given topic is typically consistent month to month.
  3. It can help you reach massive audiences â€“ There are about 8.4 billion Google searches per day. So high-quality SEO gives you access to huge audiences you might not otherwise be able to reach.

Why do businesses need SEO?

  • Search engines alone are responsible for 78% of all website traffic worldwide. Google alone is responsible for 59%.
  • Search engines are four times more effective than social media for driving sales and traffic.
  • SEO pulls in high-quality traffic. It is far superior to ads since it is organic and more likely to attract users who are actually interested in what you offer.
  • SEO traffic is more likely to convert. With higher quality traffic, your site will see better results.

SEO strategies to increase business revenue

SEO best practices are constantly changing. Search engines continue to get better at delivering the highest quality results. As a result, some of the SEO “tricks” that used to work are no longer effective.  The most successful modern SEO strategies focus on building a data-driven approach to drive user experience, content, and conversion. Here are some of the best things you can do to optimize your site.

Focus on user intent, not just keywords

A keyword is a word or a group of words that we type into a search engine to find what we are looking for. Old strategies would optimize content for these keywords. Now, rather than optimizing for keywords, the smarter approach is to understand the user intent. As search engines like Google improve, they are going beyond keywords and trying to determine what the user is looking for. To perform well in search results, we need to take the same approach. It is still crucial to research the keywords users are using in their search. However, it is also critical to understand what they hope to find.

Produce great content

Content is the heart of your organization’s website. It not only helps with SEO, but it is also how you demonstrate your expertise and build trust. Still, how do you go about finding the right content? 

Here are some tips for producing great SEO optimized content:

  • Study your top-ranking competitors and take a look at the layout and content that they share
  • Don’t copy their content; instead, improve their content
  • The goal is to make pieces of content that are way more valuable/helpful than your competitors.
  • By creating better content, you will find your website will naturally attract more engagement, links, and higher rankings

Create backlinks

Backlinks are an essential factor in SEO. Yes, you can achieve a good ranking without them, but backlinks are critical to getting your site to the top of the search engine results page (SERP). What is a backlink? A backlink is when another site provides a link to your website. It may be a link to a specific page or the home page of your business site. Backlinks are the most challenging ranking factor to achieve. The best and easiest way to get these links is by providing high-quality content that others will want to link to.

Some things to keep in mind about backlinks:

  1. Not all backlinks are created equal. Links from high-ranking sites and sites with a large number of their own backlinks will offer better results.
  2. You don’t need backlinking right off the bat to get results. It will take some time, but it will improve upon the work you have already done.
  3. Citations count as low-level backlinks. They are not as valuable, but they will still improve your results.

Share monthly blog posts

A high-quality, continually updated blog is one of the best ways to build your content and drive organic traffic. While some of your basic company and product information will stay the same, apart from occasional updates, blogs allow you to add searchable, SEO-optimized content as often as you want. Basically, you can go after an infinite number of keywords by focusing different posts on different user intent. 

A blog also gives you the power to optimize content for both top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel keywords. Top-of-funnel keywords focus on brand awareness and building a database of potential customers. Bottom-of-funnel keywords are used to attract customers ready to buy. With unlimited blog possibilities, you can reach customers wherever they are on their buyer journey.

Monthly blog posts also work to keep your website fresh. Constantly updated content shows visitors that your business is active and ready to help. The content of these posts is also the perfect way to present you and your business as thought leaders in your field and build ongoing trust and confidence with potential customers.

Audit your website

Since you will put considerable work into creating and maintaining a website to reach your SEO and sales goals, it is essential to ensure everything is working correctly. You should audit your website regularly and make any necessary changes.  There are some technical factors that not only impact performance but can now also affect SEO. These SEO factors include:

  1. Website speed â€“ The time it takes pages to load impacts search engine ranking since users often abandon slow-loading pages.
  2. Mobile-friendliness â€“ Since more and more traffic is coming from mobile devices, search engines prioritize pages optimized for mobile.
  3. On-page/technical optimization â€“ Search engines take technical issues into account, and pages with problems will rank lower in search results.

There are several tools that can automate this process for you. For example, tools available from Ahrefs and Semrush automate the audit process and offer actionable improvements you can make.