The Digital Marketer’s Guide to Improving SEO

Throughout my years working in Digital Marketing, one common question I’ve been asked is “How can I improve my website’s SEO?” Back then, I thought SEO was an isolated functionality that works on its own, but over the years I’ve come to realise that SEO is very much intertwined with many aspects of Digital Marketing.

Google has since made numerous changes to their ranking algorithm to reward Good Web Design/Content Marketing/Social Media practices and conversely penalise underhanded tactics (commonly known as Black Hat SEO) like keyword stuffing or spam links.

In this article, let’s look at how businesses can directly influence and optimise their SEO by improving key aspects of their Digital Marketing efforts.

1: Understand Your Business and its Competitors (Determine Ranking Keywords)

Understanding your business is key, but you also need to know the competition inside-out. By doing that, you will be able to determine the keywords to be ranked for.

One important factor to note when doing keyword research is the search volume. For example, if the keyword is too competitive, you might want to manage your expectations or if the keywords have very low or zero search volume, being ranked for those keywords might not bring much traffic to your website.

The trick is: Focus on keywords with high search volume and lesser competition.

To do this, you can utilise tools like Google’s Keyword Planner and SEM RUSH to work on your keyword research more effectively. To find success, you will have to constantly refine your keyword list.

2: Built a Website with Great User Experience (SEO Optimised)

Whether or not you are optimising your website for SEO, ensuring a great user experience is imperative for the success of any online-driven business and as an added bonus, Google rewards you with better ranking results.

Work with your developer to build a website with great user experience by ensuring that the website:

• Is optimised for various devices, especially for mobile
• Loads fast
• Has ease of navigation
• Has content that is indexable (in Html text)
• Has a proper URL structure
• Uses secure Https
• Has a proper site structure and linkage (no isolated pages)
• Contains the necessary keywords (from point 1) and Header tags

Another important step is to submit your website to the Google Search Console so that Google can find your site and show the correct search queries. To learn more visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

3: Produce Value-Driven Content, Regularly (Improve Searchability)

With content freshness being an important component in search ranking, businesses need to start developing new content that drives value consistently. Since there is only so many updates you can make to the corporate website, the solution would be housing the content on a hub/blog.

Producing and sharing exceptional value-driven content regularly not only establishes your brand as a thought-leader in your field but also benefits your clientele and builds trust with your target audience.

In an SEO perspective, it helps to improve searchability when users discover your content while searching on Google.

4: Run Engagement Campaigns on Social Media (Increase Social Signals)

Besides the fact that Google is placing more emphasis on Social Signals as an important ranking criterion, social media by itself helps to effectively reach out to a targeted audience.

It also increases top-of-mind awareness, making it important for brands to establish a presence on popular social media platforms.

It is also important to note that Google has started to index social platforms as well, meaning that your social media activities will appear on Google’s search engine results.

5: Run PR/Influencer Marketing Campaigns (Get Quality Backlinks)

Backlinks (Incoming links to your website) remain the most important search ranking factor. Businesses will need to ramp up their PR/Influencer Marketing activities to encourage and build more backlinks.

Some specific PR/Influencer Marketing tactics to obtain quality backlinks,

• Getting coverage on relevant online publications
• Article contributions on partner blogs/online publications
• Long-term featured banner on an influencer/partner blog

Note: If you already have an existing agency running your PR/Influencer Marketing efforts, it is important to include backlinks as one of the main KPIs.

6. Invest in paid media (Drive Web Traffic)

If executed well, Social Media and Public Relations efforts drive a considerable amount of traffic to your website, but these methods might take time to gain traction, thus the need for paid media – Search Engine Marketing, Display Ad Banners and Social Media Ads.

With paid media, you will be able to reach a very targeted audience and swiftly drive traffic to your websites. Although paid media has no direct correlation to SEO, however with increased visibility via paid media, it will eventually help to improve organic searches which lead to better search ranking.

7: Measure Your Efforts

Nobody gets it right the first time, but it is important that you learn what went wrong the first time round by measuring and benchmarking your SEO results. Some recommended tools that can help with auditing your efforts are:

• Google Analytics
• Google Web Master
• MOZ Open Site Explore and MOZ Pro

SEO is a long-term process which takes a considerable amount of time and effort to see results. Instead of being obsessed with search rankings, businesses should focus on building a website with great user experience and share great content regularly, plus ensure web traffic is consistently being channelled through Owned, Earned and Paid Media.

This article first appeared on That Content Guy