posted bydopweb27/02/2021
An effective SEO strategy is essential for creating a competitive advantage in 2021. The web is highly saturated with information and countless websites that produce similar content.
In order to get users to click on your website and to drive traffic to your page, you need a comprehensive SEO strategy.
In this article, we will be discussing:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that improves the rankings of a webpage on search engines, such as Google.
An inbound marketing strategy, SEO targets consumers who are looking for you or for information about your industry or services.
Unlike more invasive outbound marketing, such as advertisements that interrupt the consumer, SEO prioritizes the needs of the customer and ensures that they are able to find the resources they are searching for.
By following certain rules and implementing an SEO strategy, you can dramatically increase the amount of traffic and visibility your website receives, as the higher, it ranks on Google, the more people will see it and click on it.
SEO ensures that your webpage generates increased organic traffic or traffic that is not influenced by advertising efforts or paid promotions on search engines.
In general, organic search results are clicked on more often and tend to have greater credibility with users.
Developing an SEO strategy is not only about increasing the quantity of your traffic, but also the quality of your traffic.
In other words, quality traffic is website visitors who are likely to convert or purchase your product or service.
Creating an effective SEO strategy will greatly benefit your business in a number of ways.
First and foremost, if done correctly, SEO will generate more traffic than paid advertising.
SEO is free unless you hire an agency or consultant to develop and implement a strategy for you.
As long as you know how to develop an SEO-optimized website, there will be no additional cost.
So, now that you know how important SEO is for your business’s digital marketing efforts, let’s get down to business and talk about what your SEO strategy should look like.
The first element of an effective SEO strategy is keywords, which are the words that best embody the content on your webpage.
This is so that when users search for content on a search engine, they are presented with the most relevant results. To describe this in technical terms, search engine crawlers will scan your website or article for keywords that best match the user’s search.
For example, if are writing an article about where to find the best Italian food in Los Angeles, you need to ensure the phrase “best Italian food in Los Angeles” throughout your article. This will ensure that it is picked up by search engines when a user searches for this topic.
However, implementing the right amount of keywords in your content is not enough. For your SEO strategy to be effective, you need to choose the right keywords.
When choosing keywords for your content there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, pick keywords that truly reflect your content.
What is the essence of your content? What are the key themes? What topics are you informing your audience about?
Also, keep in mind how users may work their search inquiries. What words might they use?
Second, delve into some keyword research and pay attention to what words other websites in the same industry are using. Read articles that may be answering similar questions and pay attention to what keywords are being used, as well as which keywords are not being used.
Pick keywords that are widely searched and that tend to rank high. However, be aware of overused keywords that may put your content in a competitive market.
One of the first steps you should take when developing an effective SEO strategy is to analyze which webpages are ranking on the first page of Google.
These pages are doing something right if they are ranked this high, so it is beneficial to try and replicate the strategies they use.
This may be industry-specific. So, simply Google the keywords you want to rank for and see what patterns pop up.
For example, you may notice the top five search results have quantitative data in the description or they provide the reader with a numbered or bulleted list rather than blocks of text.
Once you understand what type of content is ranking, it is time to actually create your content!
Although it may seem obvious, the quality of your content directly correlates with how high your website ranks.
If you create content that is rich with information, it is more likely to satisfy search inquiries. In turn, it will rank higher on search engines.
There are two main things to keep in mind when creating content. First, create content that is different from your competitors, and second, create content that is better than your competitors.
Since there is more online content than many of us know what to do with, as an online content creator, you will be faced with lots of competition.
In order to stand out amongst the many other articles covering the same topic, you have to differentiate! Whether this means covering the topic from a new angle or framing it in a different way, differentiation will ensure your content provides added value.
On the other hand, if you choose to create content similar to what already exists, it must be significantly better.
For example, there are already countless articles about how to drive traffic to your website. These pages might be titled, “10 Ways to Increase Web Traffic” or “5 Tips for More Website Visitors.”
However, if you choose to cover this topic, you can write an article that provides 50 ways to drive traffic.
Link building is the process of integrating internal and external links in your content.
Internal links are those linking to other pages on your website, while external links are links to other websites.
It is important for others to link to your website, as this increases your credibility since others are referencing your content.
Since having many links to your website increases its SEO, we are going to show you how to develop link-building strategies.
First, if another website has a broken link that your content would be a good replacement for, reach out and offer your content as a replacement.
Or in general, if you come across a website that is in a similar industry and needs external links, offer your content where it is relevant, giving them specific examples where it might fit.
Second, do research on your competitors, or those who are ranking higher for the same keywords you want to rank for.
Analyze your competitor’s backlinks and try and get your content linked on as many of these websites as possible.
There are a number of elements that make up on-page SEO and dopweb has created an on-page SEO audit that allows you to measure how well your page is performing.
Let’s begin with setting parameters, which help search engines understand the page and deliver more tailored results to users.
The first parameter you can set on dopweb is the page language, which helps search engines understand what language the page is in so that it can deliver language-specific results. This parameter can also be set to multiple languages if necessary.
Additionally, on the dopweb builder, you can add meta titles and descriptions, which represent the title and description that would appear if your website is listed in search engine results.
The meta title and description are extremely important because they will either convince or deter a user from clicking on your website. Therefore, they must be a succinct description of what a user will gain from visiting your website and must include the page’s keyword.
The final parameter is the Open Graph tag (OG tag), which represents how your homepage appears when it's shared on social media.
Similar to the meta title and description, it must be a succinct description of what the page offers.
Finally, you need to create a schema markup, which is code that you put on your website to help search engines return relevant results to users.
In order for search engines to rank your website, they need to be able to understand your content. This is where crawl accessibility comes in.
Crawling is a search engine function that allows search engines to scan the internet for the most relevant information so that it can later be indexed and ranked for the user.
Therefore, it is essential that your website is accessible to crawlers.
First, check to see if your webpages are being indexed. Type "site:yourdomain.com" into the Google search bar and Google will list which of the webpages under that domain have been indexed.
Additionally, you can use the Google Search Console, which dopweb has integrated into the website builder, to see which pages have been indexed.
Second, to ensure that all of your important content is being found by crawlers, there are some things to keep in mind.
Make sure that your content is not protected behind logins or forms.
Additionally, crawlers do not always recognize images. So, if your webpage is image-heavy and contains content other than text, make sure you are creating a markup so that it will be indexed.
You can also ensure your website is being indexed by creating a sitemap, or a list of URLs on your website, which you can also submit to Google Search Console.
Finally, for crawlers to find and index your website, it must be easy to navigate. In other words, you should provide links for crawlers to navigate through your website, from one page to another.
There are a number of factors that go into user experience, all of which contribute to how high your website ranks on search engines.
The first is the speed of your website because the more quickly your page loads, the more likely users will be to say on it. If your page loads slowly, users will bounce off the page, increasing bounce rate and hurting your overall SEO.
One way to improve your website speed is by integrating AMP, or accelerated mobile pages.
Since most people search the internet on their mobile devices, it is crucial that webpages are optimized for mobile devices.
AMP ensures that your website will load quickly on mobile devices and will maintain its layout and user experience.
Another way to improve your website’s user experience is by improving the visual layout. This is especially important to keep in mind when developing a mobile website, since elements may be skewed of the site is not optimized for both mobile and desktop.
More simply, you can improve the visual layout of your website by keeping it simple and easy to navigate but also keeping the user’s attention with interesting photos, visuals, and graphics.
There are a number of elements that go into creating a successful SEO strategy, many more than what we have discussed in this article.
However, these steps are the perfect way to start developing and implementing an SEO strategy.
First and foremost, do your research and analyze what your competitors are doing and what successful websites in your industry look like. This will allow you to pick popular keywords and find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Then, all you need to do is create a website that is rich with relevant information, is user-friendly, and is structured for web crawlers to index.
If you need help developing an SEO strategy for your website, contact the experts at dopweb!
