Search engine optimization (SEO) is here to stay. I know, I know… rumor has is that SEO is dead or dying, but nothing can be further from the truth. Simply put, SEO is about optimizing your content, providing useful content and converting interested readers into customers, subscribers and more. While we recommend hiring a professional experienced web agency to help you with your strategy, you can certainly pull out all of the stops and do-it-yourself. Be sure to consider the following and you will be on your way to SEO success.
Keywords
When competing organically for page position, be sure to consider using well researched keywords. Vying for the wrong keywords can be costly and ineffective. So what are the three most important words to remember when planning SEO? Research, research, research. I cannot emphasize this enough. As the old saying goes, information is power and armed with the right data you will be light years ahead of the game when it comes to optimizing your website. Don’t stuff your pages with too many keywords or the search engine may consider it spamming which can carry a heavy penalty. Search engines especially Google™ are getting smarter at a quickening pace. Yes, they actually can understand bad quality content from good and use sophisticated algorithms to look for the bad and weed it out. Don’t try to outsmart them by overdoing it with lopsided keyword densities and irrelevant content or you may find your site falls off the search engine radar for good.
Content marketing
Writing useful relevant targeted and unique content is a great way to attract search engines and will help to build your audience over time. Search engines are always looking for useful unique content to index. Use your keyword strategy and research to your advantage. Write your content in such a way to attract and target visitors with information that interests them. Be unique and try to provide your own spin on things. Tailoring information to your audience is paramount. If baking is your forte, then be sure to effectively speak to that demographic. Speak their language. Use terms and buzz words that your readers are familiar with. Also encourage sharing. It helps to get the word out about your website and your valuable content even faster. Be sure to utilize your social channels such as facebook™, Twitter™, Google+™ and others to post excerpts that link back to your blog or articles.
Conversions
Converting a reader into a lead and then a customer is the holy grail of optimization. After all, what’s the point of optimizing your website to attract more traffic if you don’t master on-site callouts and conversion techniques. This is different for every business and each industry. I’ve seen the same conversion techniques work very nicely for one industry and not at all for another. Too many are fixed on page rank, keyword and content optimization and other SEO strategies without building in a strategy for the actual conversion itself. Be sure to pay close attention to building out a solid conversion strategy. Driving traffic to your website is useless without conversion.
Stick with it
SEO is not a one time fix and your done. It’s an ongoing process that takes time to master and even more time to see results. While I always recommend using a professional experienced web agency to help your business in this area, you can certainly do it yourself. Using the above tips can help you get started and with a little practice, you’ll be on your way to SEO success.
