When your clients or customers are looking for information about the products or services you provide, where will they find you? 80% of consumers hop onto their favorite browser on their mobile device, or tablet, or desktop computer and use search engines before making a buying decision. Most often your potential customers find a solution to their search at the top of the search engine results. Investing in SEO puts you front and center for these potential new customers. If not you, then who will serve these customers?
There are literally billions of pages that are indexed across numerous search engines. There are formulas and algorithms used to determine which pages show up at the top and which ones get relegated to the back of the pack. Proper use of SEO on your sight vaults you ahead of your competition depending on whether your site provides the right mix of keywords amongst the content you are sharing with your visitors.
One mistake is to rely only on optimizing for one search engine. The big bad Google! Sure, we know where most of the web traffic search is conducted but there is a formidable amount of traffic on smaller search engines like Yahoo or Bing. When considering how many different search engines exist today it only makes sense to not put all your eggs in one basket. Yes, the goal is to dominate the big pond but there are plenty of fish in the smaller ones as well. Real potential customers are everywhere and you should be as well.
From a high level view, search engines want to see a user friendly website that provides good, valuable content to their visitors. There are ways to provide great content to your users but also develop the content to be search engine friendly. As your site grows bigger with more content it naturally becomes more authoritative within your industry, which is helpful for climbing the search engine rankings and staying there. It’s easy to view the content currently residing in the top spots and determining most of the factors that leads that content to occupy high placements. To simplify the SEO process you want to provide what those top sites are doing but do it in a better manner.
To begin your SEO journey you should consider what you want to rank for. There are highly desirable search phrases that surely get a lot of traffic if you’re well optimized for them. However the competition will be stiff for those high value terms and expectations should be realistic regarding how long it will take to achieve success for certain keyword phrases. To begin you should consider lesser volume search terms but ones that may be more targeted. These keyword phrases are generally easier to rank for and help to begin building up your site authority within your niche.
Proper SEO techniques can help increase the visibility of your site and keep you ahead of your competition. Consider getting an SEO consultation and at least get an idea of what direction you should take your site to pick up the most traffic you can in the shortest reasonable time possible.
Here are some things that you can do to get you started implementing proper SEO on your website:
1. Develop an SEO Master Plan
Use a mind map, paper and pencil, or note file on your computer. Figure out and devise a plan in writing that you can use as a guide for your SEO strategies for the next 12 months.
2. Develop a long term mindset
Proper SEO takes time before you start seeing real tangible results. Organic listings get more clicks than the paid ads you see along the top of the search results pages. If you can get your site to start ranking for your desired keywords the wait will be worth it.
3. SEO Keywords
Pick all of your desired keywords and then narrow those down to five that you really want to rank for long term. If you choose to work with an SEO professional they will help you develop your keyword list. They will even uncover keyword phrases that get decent monthly traffic that you may have never considered before.
4. Invest in SEO wisely
Don’t be cheap! Remember the “Better Get Maaco” ads back in the day? Well back in the 1980s you could get your whole car painted for $99. Now it’s like $299. Sure you can get a quick and cheap paint job but it’s nowhere near as good as a custom paint job that costs 10-15 times more, is it? These days you will see ads for $299 SEO programs. Buyer beware if you decide to go down that road. You have to keep the health of your site your main priority. An SEO professional that loses your $300 won’t be as vested as someone you invest a bit more in. Keep that in mind when looking for the right SEO company or consultant to work with.
5. Scope out your competition
There are several SEO tools that can help you with market and competition analysis. You can use these tools to see what your competitors are ranking for and then reverse engineer their successes on your own domain. I do a comprehensive market analysis that will show you how your site stands versus your competition. Get a free analysis here: http://truemarketingstrategies.com/increased-visibility-form/
For more advanced SEO solutions you should consider hiring a professional. There are so many aspects to proper SEO it can make your head spin. Some but not all the terms you need to become aware of include:
Schema, off-page SEO, on-page SEO, structured data, silo, topical depth, competing pages, keyword difficulty, keyword relevancy, seo tools, keyword ranking factors (Google uses 200 or more), domain authority, page authority, trust flow, citation flow, referring IPs, referring domains, backlinks, relevant pages, jump links, determining competing pages for your keyword phrase, the what and the why behind the tactics and strategies, etc.
If you want to get your SEO done right then get an analysis first! http://truemarketingstrategies.com/increased-visibility-form/
