SEO is one of the most difficult aspects of Digital Marketing. Every website wants to rank high in search engines for their targeted keywords. One of the main reasons that we do Keyword Research, create content, and put together Content Marketing strategies is to drive organic search engine traffic. SEO can result in increased traffic, visibility, and sales.
What does SEO Stand For?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of optimizing creating website content and optimizing a website for search engines. The goal of Search Engine Optimization is to create a website that provides a high-quality user experience and great information for potential customers. In turn, the website will drive larger amounts of traffic from search engines.
Why is SEO Important?
People will search for your product/service using search engines like Google. If you can rank for your most popular keywords it can lead to new customers. SEO is important because you won’t rank high in search engines without a good strategy. If you don’t rank high for your top keywords, then your competitors are taking your traffic and your customers.
SEO Benefits
When you apply SEO effectively, you’ll gain plenty of benefits for your business, such as:
More Leads and Sales
When it comes to new leads and sales, search engines offer you a way to reach people who are actively searching for your business. In addition, conversion rates are generally much higher with organic search traffic. If someone is searching for Accounting services in their local market and your Accounting business website ranks high for those relevant keywords, you will drive more leads every month.
Enhanced Credibility
Ranking on the top page of search results (SERPs) indicates to users that Google — or another search tool, such as Bing — believes in your website. That is one of the reasons why most people remain on the first page of search results.
More Website Traffic
SEO also assists you in generating more high-quality visitors to your website. Digital marketing, as opposed to traditional marketing, provides hyper-targeted capabilities. Instead of paying for a billboard and hoping your target audience sees it, you can be confident that they’ll see your website in search results.
How to do Keyword Research for SEO
The phrases that people enter into search engines are called keywords. Frequently searched phrases are also called high search volume keywords. You need to find the most popular keywords for the products on your website or the services you offer.
Keyword Research for SEO Video
As a beginner, keyword research might sound complex. However, once you get more experience doing it, it’ll be much easier. In addition, finding keywords is much easier than creating helpful content for all of your keywords. You can watch the video below to learn more about keyword research.
What is Keyword Research?
4 Simple Keyword Research Strategies
There are plenty of ways to find keywords, but we give you some good strategies below that you can follow to build your keyword list.
- Use Keyword Research Tools to Find Your Keywords
- Find Short-Tail and Long-Tail Keywords
- What Are Your Customers Looking For?
- Explore Your Competitors Top Keywords
You can use keyword research tools to create an SEO keyword list. My favorite keyword tool is the Google Keyword Planner. You can gain an understanding of what people are searching for that’s related to your brand or products/services. For instance, are they typing in a problem such as “How to fix my lawn mower,” and you have a lawn mower repair company? Then this is an excellent keyword to target.
Free Keyword Research Tools
Seed keywords or short-tail keywords are primary keywords and usually consist of one or two words. As a result, these seed keywords will appear in most of your keywords. For instance, if you had a lawn mower repair company, your primary keywords would be “lawn mower repair”. Therefore, you’ll want to try and apply this to long-tail keywords, such as “John Deere lawn mower repair in NYC”.
Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for because they are more specific. In addition, they tend to convert better. Someone searching for “8×10 blue outdoor area rugs” are more likely to convert than someone who simply searches “Area rugs.”
One of the most important factors of keyword research for SEO is understanding search intent. When someone searches for “twin memory foam mattresses” they are generally looking for a list of relevant products for sale. When someone searches for “Best memory foam mattresses 2023” they are looking for a list of the top reviewed memory foam mattresses and brands.
Keywords represent problems that your customers are actively looking to solve. If I’m searching for the best pizza in a city, Google and other search engines will show me the top reviewed restaurants that sell pizza in that city.
Lastly, see what your competitors are using and doing. If they keep appearing in the SERPs, it’s likely they’re doing something right. Therefore, carefully look over their website, keywords, content creation, etc., and don’t copy but replicate something similar.
How to Rank Higher on the SERPs With SEO
SERPs are search engine results pages. Typically, when people say, “I want to rank on the SERPs,” it means the first page of Google or Bing. The higher you rank for your targeted keywords, the more clicks you will drive.
It’s important to get onto the SERPs, as this will help your website out massively. When you want to achieve this, ensure you consider the below tips:
1. Submit your sitemap to Google and Bing
2. Create and manage a Google My Business account
3. Connect your social media account to your website
4. Optimize your on-page SEO with keywords, internal links, external links, images, etc.
5. Develop content that is engaging and increases your website’s users’ on-page time
As a beginner SEO enthusiast, these are the five fundamental tips you must include in your SEO strategy.
5 Must-knows for content creation for SEO
If you perfect your content optimization approach for search, you will see an improvement in both short- and long-term content performance. However, there are some best practices you can follow to optimize your content for search from the start.
1. Find keywords that are appropriate for your domain authority.
2. Select your desired result type (local packs, videos, snippets, etc.) and create content around it.
3. Include photos, but limit their file size as this will affect the web page’s load speed.
4. Use internal and external links in your content to increase page and domain authority.
5. Make it simple to skim and read the text.
Content generation is really important in SEO. Failure to understand content optimization might spell disaster for your SEO campaign. Aside from SEO techniques such as keywords, keyword density, etc., ensure your content is appealing to your target audience. When creating content for your website, consider whether your customers will acquire value from it. If they do, it will probably do well.
SEO Video Tutorial
We put together a 50 minute SEO tutorial for beginners completely free on YouTube. You can also watch it below.
Free SEO Course
In addition to our Search Engine Optimization tutorial, we also put together a free course so you can rank higher in search engines. You can find that below.
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