As digital marketing evolves, it’s become clear that SEO is king. Brands that don’t utilize this strategy are missing out on a world of potential customers. If your business doesn’t have an SEO plan, then you may be missing out too on a few of the top SEO tips.
While you should work with an SEO specialist to get the best results, there are a few things you can do yourself to see some instant results. Below, we give you 7 tips for you to get SEO benefits.
1. Create a Blog
Having a business blog is a great way to drive organic traffic. Previously, blogs were mainly used by people who wanted to document their lives and write about their passions and hobbies. But this is no longer the case.
Today, companies use blogs as a cheap marketing tool. You can use it to provide useful content to your customers and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
For example, if you’re a plumber, you should create helpful blogs like “Reasons Why Your Sink Is Dripping” or “When Should I Call a Plumber for a Toilet Leak?” This shows your customers that you care about them and have knowledge that’s beneficial to them.
2. Maintain Your Blog
Not only should you create a blog, but you should also be consistent with it. There’s nothing more frustrating than discovering a helpful blog, but to find that it’s rarely updated.
Plus, regularly pushing out content helps your search engine results page (SERP) ranking, especially if you use a good keyword density. Blogs are an important business tool, and it’s a low-cost or free method of marketing.
The more blog articles you have on your website, the more pages you’ll have indexed on search engines. When this happens, it’ll also boost your SERP ranking. People rarely look past the first couple of results on the first page, so it’s vital you not only get to the first page of results but also in the top.
3. Use Videos
Just as with your writing, you’ll need to put important keywords into your videos so they rank better. You’ll want to put them into the title, description, and thumbnail. Do keyword research with free online tools to pick keywords people are searching.
4. Get Rid of Duplicates on Your Site
Duplicate content can actually penalize you when it comes to search engine rankings. If you’re in e-commerce, you might have some duplicate content on your site since you offer the same product in different sizes or colors.
Should you have the need to keep the duplicated content on your website, there’s a way to make sure you don’t get penalized by Google. Use canonical tags on your pages, which tells Google to consider each duplicate page as originals.
You can also use a 301 redirect to improve your SEO strategy. That way, the SEO is focused on one page instead of scattered throughout different pages.
5. Update and Republish Old Blogs
You may have some great evergreen content in your blog, so why not make good use of it? If your posts are from years ago, they may not be ranking as well on Google since SEO strategies have changed since then.
Dust off those old blog posts and edit them a little bit. Do some light keyword research to replace key terms in the posts, update any outdated information, and republish it.
By taking old content and renewing it, you can drive more organic traffic to your website without putting in the effort to write brand new blog posts.
6. Think About Off-Page Elements
While it’s true that SEO involves sprinkling keywords strategically throughout the writing on your website, it goes much deeper than that. The writing on your site is considered as an “on-page” element.
The other side of SEO is the “off-page” elements. This is what you don’t directly see. An easy way to boost your SEO for off-page elements is to use backlinks.
Otherwise, you’ll need the help of a professional for other off-page elements, as those are tricky to tweak on your own. They can also give you pointers on how to use backlinks effectively.
7. Take Advantage of Social Media
Implementing social media is an excellent way to promote your content and improve brand awareness. You’ll grow your audience on this platform, and this, in turn, will drive engagement.
Social media also plays a part in off-page elements for SEO. While the exact algorithms Google use aren’t known, what’s apparent is social media can affect your SERP ranking.
The more social media accounts you have linked to your brand, the better you’ll rank. Also, if any of your content is trending on social media, Google will pick up on that and rank your pages better as well.
See SEO Benefits Now
By investing a little time and money, you’ll see SEO benefits almost immediately. However, the important thing is you always test and tweak.
SEO is forever changing, which means you need to keep up with the times and not get complacent. An easy way to do this is to work with specialists who can find you the optimal strategy not just initially, but also continually.
If you need help optimizing your website, get in touch with us now for a free consultation.
Allan Todd is CEO of Pagecafe Digital Marketing. In 2022, Allan teamed up with Infront Webworks to provide digital marketing, website design, content marketing, SEO and strategy and solutions to local businesses. Allan lives in Colorado Springs.