Simple SEO Solutions to Propel Your Site Traffic

Your business has a website, but are you putting it to good use? Is your website getting you new leads and helping people find your brand?

It’s not enough to have a website. It must be optimized so people can find it. With the right SEO solutions, you can get the audience you want and start making conversions. Read on to learn more about understanding and using simple SEO solutions to gain more traffic on your website.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization involves scientific strategies and optimizations on your website that help it rank higher in online searches. The more visibility your website gets through search engines, the more likely it is that it will capture the attention of site visitors, leading to more business. If you aren’t showing up in searches and getting most of your web traffic through organic search, your website isn’t doing its job for your business.

Users no longer get online and enter a URL to find what they need. Instead, they turn to a search engine like Google and enter a query, a question, or a set of words. If your site is near the top of the results, they’ll visit your site. Then you get the chance to convert them into customers. 

If you can get noticed by people searching for solutions you can offer, that means even more business for you. SEO makes that happen.

You must attend to all SEO elements to get organic traffic to your site. We’ll get more in-depth about this later in the post.

Understanding Content Marketing

Content marketing is an effective way to grow your business through organic traffic. It involves the creation of various types of content, such as web pages, blog posts, lead magnets, email, and social media posts, to build your brand and get people to your website.

Content marketing is about getting your content seen by as many people as possible. According to varying statistics, 80 to 90% of businesses use content marketing to drive growth.

How Does SEO Content Marketing Work?

SEO content marketing uses SEO best practices to optimize your website, so it shows up in search engines. It’s not just about users searching for your brand and finding your website. It’s about people searching for solutions and finding your brand.

SEO is all about targeting and writing with keywords or terms that users enter into a search engine and getting your website to rank for those keywords. Users will then click through to your website, discover your brand and hopefully become a customer. The process means having a clear picture of who your prospective customers are and understanding their pain points. You need to know what they’re likely to search for.

There are multiple ways that you can optimize your site for keywords and get your site ranking at the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). You’ll want to write and organize your content so that the search engines understand the type of users who will benefit from your content. You’ll also optimize your site for ease of use. 

What Are the Benefits of SEO Content Marketing?

There are many benefits to SEO content marketing. When your website and content are optimized correctly, you can attract visitors who’ve heard of your brand and those who haven’t. Ultimately, you’ll attract many more customers than relying on advertising or traditional marketing alone when you use SEO content marketing that works.

Not only will you attract customers, but you will also attract the right customers. You don’t just want people to view your site. You want it to draw in people who need your services. For example, if you sell video editing software for Macs and a user searches for “best video editing software for Mac” and lands on your site, you’ve contacted a person who is ready to buy.

SEO improves your website and, as a result, user experience. Websites with better user experiences tend to get repeat visitors.

And SEO doesn’t stop working for you right after you post. Correctly-optimized keywords on a strong site will generate organic traffic for months and years. Your initial investment keeps working for your business long term.

Lastly, in many cases, SEO solutions are much cheaper than other forms of marketing. Therefore, you get a greater return on your marketing investment. 

Unpacking Simple SEO Solutions

Many factors contribute to a strong SEO strategy, including on-page and off-page optimization.

On-Page Optimization

On-Page Optimization is the actions you take on your website, specifically related to the content, that help it rank higher in search. 

On-page optimization includes:

• Researching Keywords. As we explained above, keywords are search terms that users are likely to input into a search engine. You will want to choose keywords in your business’s niche or specific market that you know your ideal audience is likely to search for. You’ll need to research and determine the most productive keywords for your business and its content. We recommend tools like Semrush, KWFinder, and AnswerThePublic for your research. Look for words and phrases with lower competition and a higher monthly search volume. 
• Writing with Keywords. Once you have a solid set of keywords, build your content around them. To optimize your content, include your target keyword throughout the body of the content.
• Follow Writing Best Practices. You’ll want to follow content marketing best practices to get content noticed and make search engines see it as valuable. These include creating authoritative content and presenting it in short paragraphs and bulleted lists that are easy to read. 
• Optimize Posts and Pages. Optimizing your content means including the keyword in necessary locations, updating your title tag with the headline, and writing a strong meta description to sell your post. You can use a tool like Yoast to help with this process.
• Use Visuals. High-quality photos or graphics will entice readers and help your site rank well, Be sure that your images include proper titles and alt text and compress them before you add them to your site.
• Include Quality Links. Include relevant, quality internal and external links to support your content and give it authority. Don’t expect readers to trust what you’re saying. Prove it to them.
• User Experience. You want your website to be fast and easy for users to read and navigate. While search engines don’t necessarily rank for user experience, they pay attention to a user’s time on the page and your site’s speed. If a user quickly leaves your site or takes forever for pages to load, it signals to Google that something is wrong.
• Broken Links. You should regularly check to ensure your internal and external links are working. Google may penalize you if your site has a lot of broken links. If their bots can’t get to your page, there isn’t a way to rank it.
• Mobile Optimization. Almost 59% of people now visit websites from their mobile devices. Google gives preference to sites optimized for mobile as well as desktops.
• Security. People worry about their safety online, so search engines prioritize sites with a security certificate. These URLs begin with https://. You can check with your web host about getting a security certificate if your site doesn’t already have one.

Off-Page Optimization

The other half of your SEO solution concerns off-page optimization, which concerns everything that happens off of your website that helps it rank.

Off-page optimization factors include:

• Backlinks. Getting backlinks or other websites linking to yours increases your domain authority and tells Google that you may be a good source of information. The Google bots figure that you must have valuable information if other sites are linking to you.
• Review Sites. Gaining positive traction on review sites in your industry and Google Business Profile will help here.
• Earning Certifications. Earning well-considered certifications that show your expertise and showing that on your site helps associate your knowledge with those organizations. 
• Social Media. Having an active, engaged presence on social media helps establish your brand’s online authority.
• Guest Posting. Guest posting on other blogs in your industry so that your name and your brand name links to them will help show your credibility. 

Hiring an SEO Content Marketing Expert

While you can handle all of the content and optimization for your website yourself, it’s challenging, especially when you don’t have the expertise or are trying to run your business simultaneously. It can be even more arduous if you’re unfamiliar with SEO best practices. Furthermore, content creation can be quite time-consuming.

As a business owner, you know how much time and effort is involved in running your business. There is always something to do – optimizing and maintaining a website for SEO is a job in itself. 

Let Content Journey handle your content marketing needs, so you can focus on other aspects of your business. Book a call today if you’re ready to partner to get the most out of your website. Let’s chat!