04 May SEO: Back to Basics

You must have heard of social media marketing, PPC, and SEO by now. Digital marketing is a continually changing field. However, the basic principles of SEO on which all these new techniques and tools remain the best strategies in business. Google updates search algorithms between 500 to 600 times in one year. Of users who search 72% of them visit a store within five miles, and almost 73% of businesses drive traffic through search. These figures imply that you need to optimize your website for search engines. SEO basics can help you start on your journey to business success using SEO.

In my opinion, the four strategies below are the basics of SEO optimization.

1. Research and Planning

Understanding your products, services, your target market, and their searches are essential in unlocking the power of keyword research. This information forms the core of digital marketing and SEO optimization. Research and planning help you understand the most searched keywords, in which context they are examined, and what is the form in which your target markets need these keywords.

The data from keyword research is necessary for you to find out the topics your target market search and how much they care about these topics provided you use SEO tools correctly. Do keyword research monthly to find out the keywords with the highest search volume. From this information, you can sort and identify the topic of your content. By research and planning, you can optimize your topics and content to suit the target market.

Most people begin keyword research using Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner. For regional keyword research, Google Trends is getting more useful. You must choose a tool that suits your research plan. Other means for keyword research are Moz Pro and SpyFu Keyword Research Tool, to mention a few.

2. Website Optimization

Website Optimization is the process of optimizing certain factors, including content, anchor text, and keywords. Today, optimization is a must to boost sales and improve online visibility.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a fundamentally essential requirement in good website optimization strategy. Your website ranking in the results of search engines improves by SEO.

You must, therefore, be careful with everything on your website, including content optimization, descriptions, image tags, headers, and, most notably, adding relevant keywords to your anchor text.

3. Off-Site Optimization

Off-Site Optimization entails optimizing your website for off-site ranking, which is crucial in improving website trustworthiness, relevance, popularity, and user perception. You can accomplish this through website promotion, linking to other websites, and ensuring SEO optimized content quality.

Website popularity and link structure are essential in off-site optimization. Any search engine looks for the volume of links inbound to your website from other sources on the internet. The quality of these links that lead visitors to your website is also examined. Search engines likewise look into how internal linking structures lead to the more in-depth pages and rank your website too. Therefore, you need to create quality navigation structures and internal links in your website. Your website rank is improved by “vote of confidence” from outside sources, sharing your content, and brand mentions using links from other websites.

4. Tracking

Anything that can be measured can be perfected. SEO success also requires metrics measurement. You need to measure the impact of the other basic strategies of SEO and refine your work progressively to improve the perceived value of your website, client retention, and new users. You can identify gaps in your SEO strategy using Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and other measurement tools to monitor your website performance.

Goal setting and performance benchmarks are necessary for you to monitor how your website ranks progressively. Some standard measurement metrics you can use to asses your content and impact of your SEO strategy are search traffic, pages per visit, conversion rate, and time on page, among others.

Digital marketing, combined with effective SEO strategies, can increase your sales and help your business grow, and I know it can do the same for you. At The Social Calling, I have been assisting clients in developing their businesses by driving traffic to their website and online marketing. 

I can help you write SEO optimized Articles and Blog Posts, White papers, Case Studies, E-books, and Email Campaigns. Get in touch on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to improve the quality and user perception of your website.