With today’s online ecosystem rapidly growing, especially in recent years, the majority of businesses have since sought asylum online, digitizing their business in hopes of capturing wider audiences.
Thanks, in part, to the rise of social media and search engines like Google, the value offered online for businesses and brands alike are unmatched, providing greater opportunity than ever before.
One online growth marketing outlet worth investing your time and energy into? SEO.
Simply put, SEO is an all-but-necessary marketing strategy across platforms used to gain traffic, build awareness, earn authority, and ultimately increase conversions. With that said, in what follows, we’ll be defining SEO, and its importance, while outlining several organic strategies you can implement to grow your business.
Eager to learn more? Then continue reading…
What is SEO?
SEO is a popular marketing strategy and acronym used in eCommerce to depict search engine optimization. Largely an organic strategy comprising free and manual techniques, SEO may also involve paid efforts in order to increase webpage rankings and otherwise.
Used for a myriad of reasons, SEO plays a primary role in increasing web traffic, capturing new leads, building a sizeable audience, and improving SEO scores to rank atop search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and the like.
Notably, Google comprises over 90% of the total online search volume, so for the sake of simplicity, we’ll be using Google as the primary example of SEO efforts. Other notable platforms include Facebook and YouTube…
Because Google’s algorithm is fluid and ever-changing, it’s difficult to recommend one definitive strategy for optimizing your SEO efforts. With that said, there are numerous techniques that can be employed and implemented so as to increase reach, visibility, and authority.
Some of the most commonly known SEO tactics include but are not limited to publishing relevant blog content, posting high-quality social & web content, incorporating relevant keywords, and link-building, just to name a few.
Top Organic SEO Techniques
With the top search engine in the world (i.e. Google) constantly revising its algorithm, it can be difficult to remain atop the most effective SEO techniques and strategies. Luckily, there are several surefire ways to improve your SEO score organically.
Below are seven (7) proven organic SEO techniques that you as a small business should implement to garner traffic and generate greater brand awareness online:
1. Content Optimization
Whether it’s the scheduling of consistent content across web and social platforms, or ensuring top-quality value-added content, both for visual and written content, optimizing your business’s content wherever it resides is essential when seeking to rank within the search engine’s algorithm.
2. Prioritize Video Content
As a notable trend, video has since begun to be ranked quite high among search engine algorithms, identifying that it’s not only what consumers prefer but it’s also what increases retention rates and engagement; all good news for search engine ranking models.
3. Implement a Backlink Strategy
Since the inception of the internet and the discovery of search engine optimization efforts, linking strategies have always remained atop the priority list regarding effectiveness. Whether internally across website content or externally via backlinks in blog posts, linking strategies are essential for any SEO strategy.
4. Keyword Optimization
Similar to linking strategies, keywords are often viewed as the backbone of any organic SEO strategy. Through keyword research and implementation, marketing professionals alike can determine the most searched long-tale keywords, identify where to place them, and ensure the avoidance of keyword stuffing.
5. Optimize Headings & Title Tags
Testing subheadings, titles, and meta title tags aren’t only great for optimizing clickthrough rates but are also essential for those looking to increase their overall SEO score. While some may argue that search engines don’t prioritize headings or titles, they do prioritize content with high clickthrough rates. However indirect, it’s an effective SEO technique to implement.
6. Optimize for Mobile User Experience
It’s no surprise that mobile-friendly content is essential in the eyes of digital marketing efforts, particularly in the eyes of search engines. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to understand its importance…
To illustrate its importance regarding SEO, mobile devices account for over 50% of all search engine clicks. Further, by 2022, it’s predicted that mobile advertising will count for over 50% of overall advertising spend, overtaking the focus on desktop at the end of this year.
By ignoring mobile e-commerce opportunities, these are the numbers you're missing out on…Don’t you want a piece of that pie?!
7. Don’t Forget About Metadata
Last but certainly not least, we can’t forget about metadata. Because Google uses automated algorithms to identify top-quality content to rank, the content itself is often not the primary metric being measured. Instead, it’s the metadata fields that ultimately define success. This includes meta descriptions, tags, SEO titles, and ALT text, among other factors.
Final Thoughts
Implementing the aforementioned organic SEO techniques are essential if you want to make your business and its content more visible, more authoritative, and more convertible.
Disregarding its effectiveness, SEO is essential, especially in today’s competitive digital landscape, for it if nothing else keeps your business relevant. Good luck!
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