Being in business today, you already know that you have competition standing at every corner. And as a business owner, you have to be prepared to fend off your competitors through a wide arsenal of strategic weapons. Thankfully, the digital world is full of these tools.
Studies have shown that nearly half of all businesses fail within the first five years. So unless you want to become a part of that club, you’ll need to enhance your marketing strategy. And when it comes to your blog or website, you need the search engines on your side.
Search engine optimization allows your blog or website to be easily indexed by search engines. And once you accomplish this, you’ll be able to rank higher in search and correspondingly drive in more referral traffic.
But how do you earn the favor of search engines like Google or Bing?
Here, we’ll explore a few tested methods for getting your site ranked higher and driving more customers to your site.
Guest Posting Services
In the olden days, bloggers who wanted to gain a bit more recognition began the arduous process of blogger outreach. This was done in the hope of having a blogger with a huge following guest post on their site. But today, there are far better methods for incorporating guest posting into an SEO strategy.
SEO guest posting services are designed to gain quality backlinks and improve search engine rankings. And this is why most business owners and bloggers today are getting links from a guest posting service. Though you may also receive a greater amount of traffic from guest posting, the primary goal of guest posting is to acquire backlinks and improve site authority.
A guest posting service removes the additional outreach work and research that is required to find credible sites. And when you’re able to allow a team of experts to do this work for you, you’ll be able to concentrate on other business tasks.
Keyword Strategy
Despite all of our advanced technology, in the world of SEO, a great deal of emphasis is placed on keyword strategy. And this is because keywords are what drive a search engine to do its job.
You probably already know the process: A user types in a word or phrase into a search engine. The search engine then delivers page after page of results. However, nearly 80 percent of users won’t navigate past the first search engine results page (SERP). Additionally, it’s estimated that around 60 percent of people will click on one of the first five listings on the first page. As such, this is where you want your site to be listed.
Keywords are critical when it comes to content creation. Because without them, your website or blog is basically invisible to a search engine. And this is why you need to know what words and phrases are driving the most (and least) traffic.
When formulating your keyword strategy, it’s imperative to study your competitor’s content to see which keywords are being used. And there are a variety of SEO tools available for this such as Buzzsumo, Semrush, Ahrefs, and many others.
Compelling Titles and META Descriptions
Titles and META descriptions are directly related to your site’s click-through-rate (CTR). And CTR is also a huge site ranking factor on Google and other search engines. As such, tweaking your titles and META descriptions are key to grabbing the reader’s (and Google’s) attention.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when crafting a title and writing a META description:
- Keep titles short, ideally within 55 to 65 characters
- Don’t let your titles or descriptions be cut off in Google
- Use your primary keyword in the title and description
- Use numbers in your titles when appropriate
- Ensure your headline grabs attention or hints at a solution to a problem
Titles, META descriptions, and subsequent H1, H2, and H3 headlines are more critical than most people think. And as these tags give your content structure and relevance, they need to be aligned so that a search engine can understand them. This is what will allow your site to be favored and ranked higher.
Additionally, site descriptions also offer your audience a snippet of what the post is about. And if this doesn’t cogently summarize your content in an engaging way, you may fail to entice a reader to click on your link.
While most people focus on gaining more traffic, you can’t forget that you won’t be able to get any traffic without the help of a search engine. And if you follow the advice listed here, you’ll be better able to rank higher in search and drive relevant traffic.
