While SEO and marketing require advanced skillsets and up-to-date techniques that work with the current algorithms, they are measurable results that are scalable, repeatable, and send predictable signals to the search engines for page visibility.
To reward a page with more visibility, Google needs assurance of the page’s quality, trustworthiness, and authority.
How do you assure the quality of your page? If it offers the reader value or unique or entertaining content, it’s a high-quality page.
For example, let’s say you own and run an online sock business. Millions of websites sell socks. How does Google know that your particular sock website is high-quality enough to rank? You can assure Google with creative content. Give the viewer something to read, view, or interact with that tells them more about your socks and why they are the best socks their money can buy.
Can they customize the socks? What cuts or fabric choices are available? What kind of patterns are there? Basically, you want to give the viewer and Google information that is unique to your product, and you want it to go into detail. That is the essence of how you do SEO marketing.
The more relevant information you have surrounding your product or service, the better. In fact, longer content is ranked more favorably in Google. Studies show that the first result on the search page contains an average of 1800 plus words. Search engines want to see websites put thought into their pages to serve the consumer and their needs better.
Also, long-form content of over 1000 words gets far more social shares than shorter content. Detail is valuable. Relevant detail and value within a page’s content is another way that SEO works.
You also need to convey trust to the search engine, and of course, trust is an essential metric within your relationship with your customer and isn’t something you can afford to ignore. To indicate trust to the search engines, you need good reviews.
Despite what the robots may think, 88% of humans trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family. You can’t understate the importance of high-quality, positive reviews for business success and SEO marketing success.
Google is a sophisticated beast and can pull reviews and rankings for a business from its partners. Too many bad reviews and Google will punish your website with lower visibility. If you have good reviews, you’re going to be seen as more trustworthy. Also, getting other businesses or influencers with good reviews, who have relevance to your niche, and authority in your industry to link to your page is an excellent and proven way to build trust with Google.
Also, you can ask your vendors, loyal customers, and business partners to link to your site with their positive reviews. This is how you get more “streets” leading to your building in Internet City. The more higher quality, relevant streets you have, the more organic traffic you’ll get to your website.
Speaking of links, link-building is a crucial technique you’ll need to employ to build your authority and credibility within the Google search network. You want to get other high-authority, trustworthy, and qualified sites and influencers to link to your content.
In SEO terms, authority means popularity. After all, Google wants to reward sites that reach a critical mass of traffic and that people like, talk about, and share. So, to build your authority, you want to get people talking about you and linking to you online. Having stellar or valuable content isn’t enough. If no one sees it and acknowledges it, it might as well not exist.
Not only will the search engines reward you for high-authority, but you’ll also be able to get in front of another person’s relevant audience with a link building strategy. This is an excellent way to build an audience of qualified leads or to up your online authority within a given community of consumers.
Also, building a supportive fan base and getting them to link to your site is another way to gain popularity and therefore, authority, on Google. But you need to get your fans to share your content and your pages.
Ask them with a compelling call-to-action at the bottom of your posts or email campaigns to share your articles and landing pages or products on social media. Have people post their testimonials of your products and services, or post pictures or videos of them using your products to their social media accounts. By having your products showing up in newsfeeds and your site linking back and forth between other relevant influencers, you’ll build authority and trustworthiness with the search engines.
Let’s go back for a moment to how the people in Internet City are finding their way to your building. How are they accessing Google’s database?
Through keywords and keyword phrases.
The next section will cover what keywords are, how they are rewarded, and how they work with an SEO marketing strategy.
You’re probably very familiar with what a keyword is. After all, you use them all the time to find things on Google. A keyword phrase is a question or a search query that an internet user types into the search bar.
When you craft content for your website, the material is supposed to answer a specific question or lead the viewer to a particular solution to a problem, i.e., a product or a service that you sell. Therefore, your content needs to be geared toward keywords and phrases that the consumer will use to find your product.
You need to be able to get into your target customer’s head and figure out what kinds of keywords they are going to use in their query and how it relates to your specific product or service. Keywords and phrases, plus backlinks, are how people will land on your page. Without a targeted keyword strategy, there isn’t a way for your viewer to search for you, nor can Google index your site and add it to the database.
Let’s go back to our sock business analogy from earlier.
You’re rolling out a new product line of women’s argyle patterned, thigh-high socks for the fall and winter season. You want this new product page to start ranking in the search engines, so you devise a keyword strategy along with relevant, high-value content for the product’s landing page.
When you write the content for your page, you want your keywords to appear throughout the piece naturally. Since a human being will be reading the material and they require the words to flow well, you can’t keyword stuff just for the sake of having them in the piece.
Remember, Google rewards your popularity with the reader. The more valuable and enjoyable the content, the more popular it’s going to be. If your piece sounds stilted because you’re stuffing it with keywords, that’s not going to work with either your viewership or the search engines.
Anyway, now you need to choose your relevant keywords. How will customers find you? What kind of phrases are they going to use when they search for new socks for the winter season? They are probably searching for something to keep their feet and legs warm.
Here are some examples of relevant keywords and phrases you can use. Note how they are detailed, and related to your product you want people to find.
Notice how the keywords and phrases indicate what kind of socks you’re selling? Note the material, the pattern, the motif, and the utility of the socks in the keyword phrases. This kind of information is also going to be on your landing page.
In essence, your keywords that your customer is going to use in their search, and the phrases you’re going to put on your landing page will match. This is the “relevance” of your keyword strategy. Relevant keywords and phrases are what indicate to Google what your page is about and how the information contained therein is going to solve the reader’s problem.
Remember, Google wants web content to solve problems for the consumer. It wants content that is relevant, valuable, authoritative, and trustworthy.
Also, keep in mind the length of your keyword phrases. Consumers aren’t searching for short, or single keywords. Semantics are important when it comes to the search queries. Studies as recent as late 2016 have indicated that half of keyword search phrases are 4 words or longer.
Now that you understand the specific metrics that go into an effective keyword strategy and SEO marketing technique, you might still be unsure of where to start. SEO, it’s definition and its execution, is a complex area of technological study, and it’s not something you’ll get right on the first try if you’re not educated or up-to-date on how the algorithms are working.
How can you formulate a winning SEO marketing strategy if you’re a beginner? Or maybe you understand how to execute an SEO campaign and realize its importance, but don’t know where to start? Perhaps you’re a student of SEO, but as a busy entrepreneur, you don’t want to spend valuable time always remaining vigilant and watching for new Google algorithm changes.
SEO is an integral part of any modern and progressive business’s marketing plan. It’s the only way to get Google to notice you, and without it, you won’t get the visibility you need and deserve with your target audience. If you’re wondering how to get your site to rank on Google, our experts at Top Rating SEO LTD can help.
We take the time to understand your industry and your business goals to formulate a winning keyword and SEO marketing strategy for you. SEO is something that takes dedication and expertise to get right and to catch the attention of the algorithm.
If you want to start ranking on the first page, grow your brand awareness, and give your customer’s relevant content, we can help. Contact us today and increase your organic reach with a professional SEO marketing strategy from the experts at Top Rating SEO LTD.
