15 factors to improve SEO results:
Search engine providers, such as Google and Bing, are constantly evolving their search algorithms. Businesses typically put significant effort into their content marketing to provide valuable information to decision-makers and influencers within companies, who will hopefully become future customers, on their discovery and exploration stages of their purchasing journey. For these individuals to find your valuable content, which typically takes you a lot of time and resource to create, ideally it needs to appear on Google, Bing, etc, when they search for it - preferably on page one of the returned search results - and to achieve this requires an understanding of how the search algorithms are working.
From this understanding that you are then implementing the necessary steps to achieve a page one position to give you the very best results for all your effort. According to Advanced Web Ranking, the first position on Google search results on a desktop device has a 34.36% click-through rate. On a mobile device, it is 31.35%.
Below are factors that influence SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) performance, follow them and see what happens to your SEO results. Don’t expect results immediately but within a few months, you should start to see the rewards of your efforts.
1) Know your SEO organic primary search keywords and their performance. Placing effort into understanding your primary SEO keywords is extremely important to avoid misdirected effort and wasted resources. Spending time using tools such as Google AdWords, to look at how frequently search terms are used and how competitive they are can take time, but that time is well spent. It is all too common that you will hear someone say we are on the first page for Google for our search terms. Then when looking closely the search terms are never searched and their sense of achievement is therefore misguided. Once you know your chosen keywords you can ensure they are effectively used within your overall SEO strategy.
2) Look at Google analytics for the load speed of your web pages in different browsers and devices. Also, ensure you have a fast HTTPS secure website versus HTTP which is not secure.
3) Optimise your web and blog pages for optimal user experience.
4) Use fresh and interesting content. According to Ascend 72% of marketers say relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic.
5) Aim to get external links from other websites back to your own web pages (these are known as backlinks). What about Social Media backlinks do these also impact SEO? Yes, they do. Here is an interesting article by Search Engine Journal that reviews the question of the impact of social media on your SEO results. To improve your social media activity read our blog called '4 Strategies to maximise business results from social media marketing'.
6) Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, which are SEO terms for related keywords or synonyms. When you enter your primary chosen keywords into Google once the results are returned look at the bottom of the returned page and you will see many suggestions for alternative searches. Use these to help you with your LSI keyword selection.
7) Watch the bounce rate of your SEO priority website landing pages. The bounce rate of your web pages will have a significant impact on your SEO results. Spending to create interest and visitors to your website or landing pages and for those visitors to immediately bounce is all too common resulting in creation investment being wasted. Carefully considering what individuals are looking for as they progress on their journey through to purchase and providing this to them will help improve the value and attractiveness of your web pages and therefore reduce your bounce rates.
8) Consider tools to help select keywords (e.g. Ubersuggest tool and SEMRush). SEM rush, for example, will allow you to look what search terms are being used by your competitors.
9) Use Google’s search console to analyse SEO performance. Look at your search analytics and sort by position. If you look at those search terms that are just below the first page Google results you can place effort on these to get them to the first page.
10) Maintain a company blog and post onto to the blog high-quality content. Google rates quality higher than quantity although aim to maintain a reasonable frequency in posting content too. An interesting statistic from HubSpot is that B2B companies that blogged 11 times or more per month got 3X more traffic than those blogging only once or less per month.
When creating a blog aim to include the following:
11) Include topical and fresh blog content (ideally around 1900 words) with multimedia content including such items as infographics, images and video.
12) In your blog title use brackets and parentheses.
13) Include numbers in headlines (e.g. 15 factors to improve SEO in 2018).
14) Include multiple links that reference external content and multiple links to older pages on your site.
15) Use short URLs and ensure your chosen keywords are in your titles.
According to Tech Client featuring a blog as a key part of your website will give you a 434% better chance of being ranked highly on search engines.
To view 50 compelling blog statistics visit express writers.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) done well can help you maximise your 2018 prospect engagement. Before you post content, plan your approach and include the tips above to help you achieve improved results. As detailed in the Epitomise blog called 'Why you could be wasting over half of your marketing budget (how to fix it)' Promixa highlights that up to 60% of marketing budgets are being wasted. Well-considered SEO can help you achieve results cost-effectively especially when compared to other digital marketing strategies that can be relatively expensive.
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About Epitomise:
We help SME and Technology companies use modern marketing strategies to grow. From strategic advice to tactical execution grow your business with the support of a 'top-100' award-winning marketing leader who is supported by a network of expert marketing specialists. With over 20-years' senior marketing experience and a track record of delivering results, as an attentive expert strategic marketing and services company, we help you grow your brand, leads, sales and customers by doing the right things the right way. Help for as long or as short as you need.
