Let’s face it. The SEO strategies you’re using aren’t getting the results you thought they would.
It used to be easy to get your web pages leading the pack on Google, but today you have to know more than just the keywords that rank well.
This article will show you the top 10 things you can do right now to make sure you get each article to the top of Google.
Selecting the Perfect SEO Strategies
Deciding how you should approach your SEO strategies depends on a few things: your competition, industry, target audience demographics, historical events, etc.
For the most part, just writing more “authoritative content” could be your answer, but in more competitive niches you might have to put the “pedal to the metal” and learn everything you can about SEO strategies.
This article will have some tools for you to learn how to judge your competition, but it’s you really up to your to decide if SEO is the best strategy for your current situation. If you’re a one-man show and trying to compete in a competitive niche, like digital marketing, you might want to consider alternative ways to market your business.
SEO is always a good idea, but if you’re after quick results, you might want to think about spending money on advertisements and then building your SERP ranking gradually with one of the many long-term SEO strategies.
Niche Selection
The most important part of utilizing SEO strategies is to recognize your niche before you start creating content. If your website to too general or too broad, Google will not recognize what your website is about and de-rank you.
It’s vital that you provide Google with the correct information with the best SEO strategies. For instance, if you are trying to rank for marketing, which is a very difficult topic to rank for, you would have to make the term “marketing” the focal point for each piece of content your place on your website.
You can branch out from there, but straying too far away from “marketing” would de-rank your position with Google.
Here is another example…
Let’s say you want to rank for something more specific, which is a great idea, like “Instagram marketing.” Creating content regarding just Instagram marketing, like “influencer Instagram marketing,” “Instagram Business,” and “Instagram photo editing” would be fair game. Creating content that goes deep into the art of creating photos on Instagram is something people definitely want to know more about.
Voicing for Your Target Audience
After you figure out how niched you want to be, you need to understand your target audience at a very deep level. This means you need to understand how your customers will react to your SEO strategies. Will they appreciate the content you create? Are you using the right buzzwords, phrasing, and tonality in your content to truly make an emotional connection?
An easy way to do this is with social media groups. Join all the social media groups you can regarding the products you sell. You’re not necessarily looking to sell in these groups. That may come up, but that is not the point here.
What you want to do in these groups is get into meaningful conversations with your potential clients to learn about them. What you learn about them will help you create ads, content, sales scripts, and much more. Remember, your clients are not just interested in your product or service. Identify their pain points and you’ll never run out of ideas or products to sell them.
Keyword Selection Tools
Knowing which keywords are important to your niche is one of the first things you should do before you start creating content. You should make a list of all the words and phrases you want to highlight and then create a content strategy to disseminate the information.
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you should know SEMrush.com and the Google Keyword Planner are two of the best places to find the keywords and phrases for your SEO strategy.
After you utilize those tools, open up a spreadsheet and start planting your words and phrases in the order of importance. What I mean is the most competitive terms, are not always the best terms to go after. If you know your competitors have a stronghold on certain topics online, then you might want to “side-step” them by ranking higher for similar phrases.
Instead of trying to rank for “marketing,” try to rank for “Facebook marketing tactics” or “B2B Twitter marketing.” These little adjustments can all the difference.
The goal is to obviously get on the first page of Google as fast as possible, but if you figure out what words your target market types into Google most often then you’ll know what you need to rank for. This is the general premise, but sometimes you can find other words and phrases that attract the same or an even better audience if you target other keywords or phrases.
How Important is Length?
The length is an extremely important part of every SEO strategy. Creating shorter content is something you may be able to get away with at first, but the more competitive your keywords are the more important the length is.
Recognizing what length your competition uses is a great way to see how long your content should be. I recommend just making it in-line with the table above, but if you don’t feel you can write enough on your particular topic then just make sure your content is better than your competitors.
An easy way to figure that out is to type in the keyword you wish to rank. Click on the blogs that are beating you. Then check how well they are using the tactics in this blog and the others on this website and you’ll know what to do to beat them at their own game.
Many times it takes creating longer content with better links. Other times it means creating more visual content by adding infographics, pictures, or even videos. All of these things add up and will make your content more interesting.
If you’re looking to utilize social media to enhance your SEO strategies it is necessary to know what lengths work the best for each platform. Use the tables above and below to know where you should stand.
Link-Building Tactics
These days linking is not as important for SEO strategies as it was originally. The reason is many marketers where placing links to their pages all over the internet in places that do not help the reader. For example, a great way to get backlinks about 10 years ago, was to place a link to your website in the comment section of every site you can visit. It worked for awhile, but Google realized this was a cheap way to get to the top of their search engine and made the internet a less than the enjoyable place.
Now it’s much more difficult to get ranked higher so focusing on the keywords, phrases, and the length of your content is much more important than the links you use.
Internal Linking
SEO strategies should require you to link at least 3-4 times per thousand words on all blogs. You should be creating a loop within your website to increase the amount of time your reading spend viewing your content. The time and the frequency your readers spend increases the authority of your website and thus improve its ranking.
External-Linking
The number of external links you have these days is less important these days. You should have numerous external links per thousand words, but they should add to the authority of your content and simply make it a better article.
Keep in mind the quality of the link. If you’re ranking to a website that sits on the 10th page of Google, it will hurt your ranking. Pick links that are ranked either the same or better than your page that is not targeting the same keywords as you.
Back-Linking
Getting links back to you is important to your SERP ranking, but only if it comes from a related website that adds to the value of your article. One of the best strategies to get more links to you is to guest blog for more authoritative sites. Many of those blogs will offer backlinks as currency in exchange for original and authoritative content.
Another strategy is to read blogs that are similar to you. Then write articles that elaborate or add information that is omitted from an article on their site. You can then get in touch with the writer of the blog and tell him or her that you love this article and noticed that it needed more information. If you fill in the gaps they will sometimes link back to you if they are serious about their SEO. Most bloggers are so they will probably go for it.
Using Email To Increase Search Traffic
Email is another way to get more traffic to your website and a very good SEO strategy to increase repeat visitations.
What you should do is create a “lead magnet,” like whitepapers, case studies, and detailed blogs with eye-catching headlines to collect the name and email of your visitors.
Draw Traffic To Your Page With Social Media
Using even the best SEO strategies will not get you immediate results. What can help you in the short-term is pay-per-click (PPC) ads to draw initial traffic to your website. If you cannot afford PPC ads then I have to recommend using all the social media networks you can.
Each social media platform has options to monetize it at a fee, but building your network of loyal followers is a perfect long-term strategy and a short-term one too.
If you utilize hashtags and have engaging content you can get the attention of interested parties relatively quickly. The current size of your following is irrelevant if you get viewers interested enough to click on the links you provide. You just have to make sure that what you create is current, relevant, and eye-catching.
Using copywriting tactics, like targeting, using action words, and emotionally connecting with your audience will surely draw traffic to your website if you present enough of a reason for them to click.
For more information on what works for content marketing in general and on social media, click this link to learn more.
