What is SEO and why is it so important for your business?
SEO is the method of improving the quality of your website’s traffic from search engines organically, rather than through direct or paid traffic. Most online journeys begin on a search engine, making search the most-used digital tool and an essential focus for your business.
Leveraging SEO tactics to optimise your web pages supports your business by improving search rankings and optimising user journeys. This helps lead significant members of your customer base to your site.
To boost your business’ online rankings, it is important to know how to optimise your content for search engines to gain visibility. With PLMR Digital’s top four recommended tactics, you can bring your business’ SEO efforts up to speed to ensure you are reaching your desired audience.
- Conduct a website audit
Your website is your business’ most important marketing tool to drive leads and create conversions for your organisation. Therefore, it is crucial that your website is working effectively to meet your marketing objectives e.g. driving more sales or email sign ups. The audit will enable you to understand what needs to be improved and what skills and techniques you require to tackle your competitive online marketplace and ultimately reach your required audience(s).
Harnessing third-party tools that can crawl through your site’s pages will indicate the elements of your site that must be improved to meet SEO requirements. You can then share this audit with your web designer who will be able to implement any immediate amends. Other amends will be ongoing and long-term.
The most important factor here is to make sure that your Google Analytics and Google Search Console are set up and that they are actively reporting data from your website. Google Analytics offers extensive information on user demographics, behaviour and acquisitions. Google Search Console will show the search queries that are directing users to your website and highlight any issues that need to be resolved for Google crawling and readability.
- Perform keyword research
Keyword research is the method of discovering and analysing search terms that people enter into Google. That data can be used to enhance or improve your organisation’s SEO or general marketing strategy. Keyword research can reveal queries to target, as well as the popularity and ranking of queries too.
Once your organisation has identified those keywords, it’s important that they’re then categorised into different aspects and topics of what you’re trying to promote on your site. For example, if the search query is relevant for a blog piece and Google has crawled (the process of finding new or updated pages to add to Google) it, your business has a higher chance of ranking above your competitors or relevant websites that are lacking high-volume keyword saturated content. It’s important to note that relevant keywords should always be included not just within blog content, but withing page titles, meta descriptions, alt text descriptions and headers too.
The Google Keyword Planner by Google is a free tool that can be used to support with your keyword research, however there are paid for third-party tools that can help too.
- The importance of building backlinks
Backlinks are extremely valuable for SEO because they represent a reliable and trustworthy source from one site to another. In short, backlinks to your website are an indication to Google that others vouch for your content. It’s crucial that your organisation acquires high authority backlinks that are associated with desirable and relevant organisations.
A good starting place is to enhance your organisation’s internal linking, as Google will not prioritise your site if it’s unsure on the hierarchy of your website pages. Your internal links connect your content in a formatted way that allows Google to make sense of your site’s structure. It’s an effective method that is completely within your control, and you can guide users through the conversion process.
Secondly, it’s important that you research relevant and appropriate websites (including competitors) to understand what backlinks you should be targeting. There are several effective tools that offer detailed backlink reports and audits that can support with retrieving this useful and relevant data to enhance your off-site SEO.
- Content creation
Quality content and organisation is key when it comes to boosting your online rankings. Developing exciting, fresh and new content regularly is an integral part of an effective SEO strategy.
The best way to approach this is by creating a content calendar that supports your main content marketing goals.
The first step is to analyse competitors who rank higher than your organisation through search rankings and determine what content they are publishing, it’s also important to use those keywords from your research task to determine what content populates Google with those keyword searches. This will help you kick start blog and content inspiration.
It’s useful to organise these ideas using an SEO content planner. There are free templates available online which allow you to create new content and decide where to schedule this content, as well as re-publish or re-share content again that is relevant to events or campaigns.
Final thoughts
SEO optimisation is key to boosting your business’ online rankings. The process can be time consuming and often results aren’t instant but the long-term effect on your site’s online rankings is worth the wait.
No matter your experience level, using these tactics will support with producing the results you want and conquering your overall marketing goals.
If you are unsure where to start, PLMR Digital is a full-spectrum agency with the experience and skillset to help any small or large organisations meet their wider marketing goals, and we’re always happy to advise.
For more information on the services PLMR Digital offer please click here or contact lucy.somers@plmr.co.uk.
