15 factors to improve SEO results and grow prospect engagement

Why the fifteen matter more than the algorithm

Search engines change their algorithms constantly. Businesses put significant effort into content designed to help decision-makers and influencers during the discovery and exploration stages of a buying journey, and for that content to be found it has to appear when those people search, preferably on page one.

According to Advanced Web Ranking, the first organic position on a desktop search carried a click-through rate of 34.36%, and 31.35% on mobile. That is the prize, and the fifteen factors below are what move you towards it. Do not expect results immediately. Within a few months you should start to see the return on the effort.

This article was first published in 2018. The fundamentals have held up; a few of the tools named in it have moved on.

Factors 1 to 3: keywords, speed and experience

1. Know your organic primary search keywords and how they perform. Understanding which keywords matter avoids misdirected effort and wasted resource. Time spent in keyword tools, looking at how often terms are searched and how competitive they are, is time well spent. It is common to hear someone say they rank on page one for their search terms, only to find on inspection that nobody searches those terms, which makes the sense of achievement misplaced. Once you know your keywords you can build them into the whole SEO strategy.

2. Check page load speed across browsers and devices, and make sure the site is served over a secure HTTPS connection rather than plain HTTP.

3. Optimise your web and blog pages for the best possible user experience. Search engines increasingly measure what visitors do, not only what your markup claims.

Factors 4 to 6: content, links and related terms

4. Use fresh and interesting content. According to Ascend, 72% of marketers say relevant content creation was their most effective SEO tactic.

5. Aim to earn backlinks from other websites to your pages. Links shared on social media have an effect too, which is one more reason to get the social side right. Our four strategies for better results from social media marketing covers that in detail.

6. Use latent semantic indexing keywords, which are simply related terms and synonyms. Enter your primary keywords into a search engine and look at the related searches suggested at the foot of the results page. They are a useful starting point for choosing them.

Factors 7 to 9: what happens after the click

7. Watch the bounce rate of your priority landing pages. Bounce rate has a significant effect on results. Spending to create interest and drive visitors, only for those visitors to leave immediately, wastes the investment that brought them. Think carefully about what someone at that stage of their journey is looking for and provide it, and the bounce rate falls.

8. Use tools to help you select keywords. Several of them will also show you which terms your competitors are ranking for.

9. Use a search console to analyse your performance. Sort your search analytics by position: the terms sitting just below the first page are where a modest amount of effort produces the largest gain.

Factors 10 to 15: the blog

10. Maintain a company blog and post high-quality content to it. Quality is rated above quantity, though frequency still counts. HubSpot found that B2B companies blogging eleven or more times a month received three times the traffic of those blogging once a month or less.

When creating a blog post, aim to include the following.

11. Topical, fresh content of a substantial length, ideally around 1,900 words, with supporting media such as diagrams, images and video.

12. Brackets and parentheses in the title.

13. Numbers in the headline, as this article does.

14. Several links out to external references, and several to older pages on your own site.

15. Short URLs, with your chosen keywords in your titles.

Where SEO fits in the budget

Search engine optimisation done well is one of the more cost-effective routes to prospect engagement, particularly compared with digital channels that charge for every click. That matters, because as Proxima’s research described in where SME marketing budget is wasted sets out, up to 60% of marketing budgets are lost to inefficiency. Before you publish anything, plan the approach and build the factors above into it.

Sources

• Advanced Web Ranking: organic click-through rate by search position
• Ascend: survey of marketers on effective SEO tactics
• HubSpot: research on blogging frequency and traffic
• Proxima: research on waste in marketing budgets