As mobile takes over the traditional way to browse the web, SEO algorithms have adapted to help users find the right content quicker and easier.
One of the main ways to improve SEO on your site is through content—and lots of it. But there’s also a lot of other steps that work with the content to create a long-lasting SEO strategy for your business. These include link-building, reducing bounce rates, and even working on the UX features of your site.
Updating your site and optimizing everything for searches can at first seem pretty expensive—especially if you consider hiring a specialist. But whichever way you work on your strategy, you will definitely save more money than you spend in the long run.
So, how can you build a great SEO strategy?
Keep tabs on the competition
Nobody expects you to re-invent the wheel. The aim is to keep the wheel turning better than the rest. Keeping tabs of your competition is crucial, and there’s nothing to say you can’t copy what you see—but do it better.
Check out their website: What are they doing that you aren’t? What content do they have? Do they have sites linking back to theirs? What makes them stand out?
There are plenty of tools online that can help you stalk your competition to understand a little more about what they’re doing, what words they’ve targeted, and how effective they are. One tool to use would be SEMrush.
Select less competitive keywords
When you’re just setting up, don’t try to rank for the highest words. This will only take up huge amounts of your budget with very little return. Instead, start on less competitive words and work your way up. It’s better to be getting some traffic than none. Researching long-tail keywords—which are more detailed and specifically searched phrases—will help create relevancy within your content, whilst also covering the more traditional keywords at the same time.
Get to know your site’s markup
Behind the scenes of your site there will be structured data and a markup that helps Google’s algorithms read your content. With this markup, Google can then create “rich snippets,” which are more palatable for the searcher. By understanding how to mark up your content—using Schema.org—you can work on labeling every asset on your site to make it even easier for Google to understand your relevancy.
Work on off-page SEO
Link building will help Google see your site as valuable to the searcher. You can do this through guest posting on other, authoritative sites and linking back to yours. The links should be natural and authentic within the content. You can understand more about onsite and offsite SEO at www.theecommguys.com.
Creating an SEO strategy that’s built to last will take time, effort, and money. It’s very much trial and error and without the right knowledge or tools, you can easily get lost. Hiring an SEO specialist can help get the process off the ground and get you right on track to growing your business.
