Almost 70% of businesses say generating traffic to their website and boosting leads are major challenges. About 93% of businesses say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing methods. With search engine optimization (SEO), you can make sure consumers see your website content.
SEO allows you to optimize your content for search engines like Google. A higher search engine ranking can boost web traffic, leads, and conversions.
Not sure how to get started? We’re here to help! Here are the seven SEO tips you need to start optimizing. With these tips, you can boost your ranking and start growing your business. Get started with these seven blog SEO tips today.
Understand Your Audience
Before you start writing content, it’s important to know who you’re writing content for.
Who are your customers? What topics do they care about? What problems are they experiencing?
Understanding your customers’ pain points can help you offer them easy solutions. Over time, consumers will start to turn to you for the answers they need. Then, you can generate brand trust and loyalty.
Brand loyalty can help you retain customers, which can improve your ROI.
Are you targeting a broad audience? Chances are, different types of customers have different problems. You can’t appeal to everyone with one post.
Instead, segment your audience into smaller personas. You can segment your customers based on demographics like age, gender, and location.
You might also segment them based on the products and services they’re using, interests, and pain points.
Google’s algorithm now uses machine learning to better understand the consumer’s search intent. Search intent refers to why the consumer is searching. Usually, consumers are either looking for answers to their questions or a product/service.
Someone might look for a nearby dentist while another searcher might look for the best electric toothbrushes. These two search queries require different forms of content.
Once you understand your customers, you’ll have an easier time appealing to their curiosities and needs.
Choose Your Keywords
The backbone of SEO is content. After all, that’s what your customers are looking for!
Before you can start creating content, however, you need to know what content to create. What questions are your customers asking? What answers are they looking for?
For example, you can see how this post about a 250 kw generator answers questions consumers are asking.
It’s important to know how your customers are phrasing their searches. You can create a list of target keywords for your content by using online tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Google Trends, and Keyword Planner.
Look for keywords that have a high search volume. You’ll notice some keywords are more competitive than others. Look for low-to-medium competitiveness as you start using these blog SEO tips.
When you start writing your content, use one focus keyword for each post. Write for your keywords (instead of stuffing keywords into pre-written content). That way, your content answers the questions your customers are already asking.
Optimize for UX
Google considers the user’s experience (UX) on your website when determining SEO rankings. If your site is difficult to use, it could scare off customers. A slow-loading website could cost you customers, too.
Optimizing your website with UX in mind can help you keep people on your website. Otherwise, they’ll leave without clicking around. If visitors leave without clicking and exploring, it increases your bounce rate.
Meanwhile, your clickthrough rate and dwell time will drop.
Your ranking will drop as a result.
You can improve the user experience by making your website easy to navigate. Add white space to give your content space to breathe. Don’t forget to speed up your load times.
Almost 40% of site visitors will stop engaging if a site takes too long to load.
Make sure your photos are condensed. Heavy files (including images and plugins) can cause your site to lag.
Improve the readability on your site. If your content is easy to read, people will stick around. Include readability by using short paragraphs and sentences.
You can also break content apart using headers, subheaders, bullets, and lists.
Go Mobile
About 96% of mobile search traffic is generated through Google. Over 60% of mobile searchers say they’re likely to contact a business if they have a mobile-friendly site.
Google also uses mobile-first indexing to rank websites. If your site isn’t mobile-optimized, your ranking below competitors. Since 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results, you’re probably losing customers.
Make sure your site is mobile-optimized. You can test out your site using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Make sure those mobile pages are fast as well.
Craft Unique Content
Google prioritizes unique, high-quality content. While it’s important to create content regularly, focus on quality over quantity.
Make sure your content reflects a single target keyword. You can use secondary keywords within a post for variety.
What value can you offer your readers?
Consider EAT (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness). Show readers they can trust you by adding research links from high-quality websites. Leverage your experience and expertise to show readers you know what you’re talking about.
Link building is important to your SEO strategy, too.
Use internal and external links. Internal links send readers to other pages on your site. External links refer to research and studies from high-quality references related to your industry.
Use Local SEO
Local SEO can help you reach nearby customers. Consider local SEO tips such as:
- Optimizing your Google My Business listing
- Posting reviews on your website
- Asking customers to post reviews on your Google My Business listing
- Posting location-based content
- Using location-relevant keywords and language
About 56% of mobile searchers are from customers looking for local information. Meanwhile, 18% of local searches lead to a sale within a day.
Using local SEO copywriting tips can help boost your ranking in front of local consumers.
Check the Trends
As you use these SEO optimization tips, make sure to keep up-to-date with the latest SEO trends. For example, more consumers are using voice search to find answers online. You’ll need to adjust your keywords to appear for these searches.
Other relevant trends include featured snippets, video content optimization, and zero-click searches.
