In the modern era of the internet and business strategy, you most likely know the importance of SEO if you’re a big organisation; or, in fact, if you’re any sort of company who makes use of digital technology. Of course, you may also know that, as with all modern technology, software and online algorithms, they age quickly. SEO is no exception, as the best practices in ranking highly on search engine results must adapt to companies such as Google, whose ever-changing algorithms and procedures required to rank well make it absolutely paramount that you change with them.
If your business is researching and implementing SEO practices by itself, that’s commendable, as it gives you free reign over the marketing process. In addition, you know your own business better than anyone. However, this isn’t a promotional process you should take lightly, as you have to learn to become an expert in the SEO industry. If you miss a trick, it could be costing you a good position in search rankings, which your competitors didn’t miss the chance to claim.
Search engine optimisation is all about impressing search engines. Maybe you understand the basics of it, in terms of the core principle of marketing: get your brand out there in front of as many potential customers as possible, and they will go for the first business they see offering the products or services they need.
Whilst this is true in a sense, there’s a lot more to SEO and that. It can offer your company a lot more than that. Much like all marketing, the core goal involves targeting the people who matter, whether that be on a local or a global scale, as well as simply impressing Google and ranking highly on the pages that people will first see when they’re browsing casually or intently for services related to yours.
So what tricks might you be missing? What traps does your business need to avoid if it wants to use SEO as effectively as possible?
Don’t let yourself follow blind sources.
Whilst SEO is a highly successful marketing strategy for businesses, it also attracts pale imitators given the immense size and success of the industry. That’s why it’s all too easy to follow bad advice and end up implementing practices which not only fail to improve your business’ success in terms of ranking and targeting the correct audience for your goods or services, but actively worsens your ability to target the people you need to be reaching.
Like all marketing, you can do it well, or you can do it badly. Maybe old forms of advertising, such as billboards, posters or flyers are now only used by certain, specific types of businesses, but their core appeal and method still holds true, just through a slightly different medium. SEO is the new poster advertising your business, and if you want yours to be plastered on top of those of your competitors, you’d better ensure that your business is prepared to tackle the requirements of this industry day in and out. It might sound exhausting, but if you have a dedicated team willing to put in the time and continuously reinvent your marketing strategy, as they would for forms of promotion that didn’t involve SEO, then you can succeed. It’s easy to see this as separate from normal marketing, but it isn’t. Much like the real world, techniques change all the time and you must adapt to the new landscape when they do change.
A highly responsive site can do wonders for your company.
Standing out and appealing to potential customers, or existing customers, is a popularity game. It’s as much about ranking highly as it is about making things as simple for your visitors as possible. If you’re ranking number 1 on the results page, but your website isn’t responsive to the vast array of mobile or tablet devices continuously being created and re-created, then your potential clients will simply move to whichever company is ranking at number 2 on the results page.
SEO is determined by so many factors, and one of the most recent additions is the responsive of a website to all forms of screen size, browser capability or the device being used. Mobile users are growing and if your site used fixed layouts, designs and non-scaleable images, then you’ll immediately be discouraging the rapidly-growing number of mobile users online. In fact, the numbers have grown to five times the size they were a couple of years ago, which means you’re discouraging greater numbers of potential clients by the day.
Pay attention to what customers are looking for, rather than what you want from them.
This is a piece of advice which has applied to businesses for decades; long before SEO was even a concept. Of course, it’s something very easy to forget, or something which may simply seem very difficult to achieve in the online world without a proper way of collecting data.
Well, Google is one such way of collecting data. Its purpose for you might simply be a means to marketing your business, but its overall function is to showcase the massive amounts of stored data online. If you can’t research and collect data on potential customers within your industry in the same way, there’s no way you’ll be appeal to create the correct content or keywords to appeal to them.
This is one of the most important parts of modern marketing and SEO that businesses fail to do properly, missing the key trick of all. If you’re struggling to put together a decent set of keywords, or create content which really lures clients in through attractive titles, it might be time to stop doing everything yourself and enlist the help of an SEO agency. These companies are expert when it comes to link-building and effective uses of keywords through effective landing pages, home pages, and the like in order to lure all the potential clients you need to your website.
You may understand the importance of SEO, but there are so many new techniques you might be neglecting. Ensure that your team is ready to constantly adapt and grow with this changing industry.