The majority of you have probably heard the word SEO mentioned in discussions about online businesses, digital marketing, or the internet in general. In any case, you might be astonished at how many people only have a vague memory of those three letters.

Today’s firms spend an average of 41% of their marketing budget on SEO because, according to Safari Digital, 61% of marketers think it’s the secret to success online. To put it briefly, investing the effort to develop a solid SEO strategy can completely transform not only your website traffic but also your entire company.

In essence, SEO is the process of increasing your website’s traffic and SERP (search engine results page) rankings by utilizing specific qualitative content standards and technology advancements. Quantity is also very important. Eventually, increasing the amount of content you write, the number of links you use, and the variety of keywords you use can help your website rank higher. This process is known as “scaling,” and it essentially means just that.

Thus, we have included a few items there. Let’s quickly go over the primary resources you’ll need to begin developing your SEO plan before getting too ahead of ourselves:

1. Keyword targeting

Keywords are phrases that are commonly searched for on Google, Bing, etc. and they are a crucial part of determining your website’s rankings. Use the right amount of keywords in the right places and in time you’ll see your pages climb up the leaderboards.

Keyword strategy has changed a lot over the years, it used to just be stuff as many in there as possible, but lots of content then became spammy and sites were ultimately penalized by Google’s algorithms. These days, you need to do your keyword research, use a wide variety of keywords, and fit them in naturally. Google gets smarter by the day, so they’ll make you work for it.

2. Metadata

You can think of metadata almost as your shop window. Your meta title and meta description are the first things a user sees in the SERP which influences whether or not they click.

Also, Google uses what are known as ‘crawlers’ (imagine tiny robot spiders), to scan through websites and collect information that matches search queries. By including keywords in your meta data (including image tags and heading tags) Google can more quickly understand the relevance of your page.

3. Backlinks

As we move into the more technical side of things, another crucial factor in SEO performance is acquiring backlinks. This is when another website links to yours in an article or blog post. Not only does this help you gain what is known as domain authority, but it also directly improves the chances of people clicking through to your website if it appears on other reliable domains.

You can earn organic links by simply writing engaging content: the better your work and the more closely you match with a person’s search intent, the more likely others in your industry are to reference your site. This overarching process is known as link-building and while you can simply reach out to other sites to trade links—quid pro quo—there a plenty of other activities that can help speed up this process:

• Guest blogging.
• Testimonials.
• Answering questions on sites like Quora.
• Creating shareable content such as videos and infographics.
• Using industry contacts and sharing on social (e.g. LinkedIn).

4. Technical SEO

Carrying on from that, there are various other technical issues in the back end of your site that once addressed, can make a huge difference in your overall SEO results. At the end of the day, if your website’s UX isn’t smooth and accessible, it’s going to be hard for any visitor to do anything significant on your website. For context, over 50% of all online traffic is mobile, so when it comes to things like UX, the technical stuff matters.

Whether it’s ensuring site speeds are quick, removing ‘toxic’ backlinks (links to websites that are deemed irrelevant or untrustworthy, etc.), or creating a clear XML sitemap with a clean URL structure, all of these technical SEO tips can be huge when it comes to securing those higher rankings. You don’t want anything to get in the way of SEO doing its job, which is allowing for people to find your website organically.

5. SEO metrics

You can’t do effective SEO if you don’t know what “effective” means! You’ll need to have a thorough understanding of SEO metrics in order to measure, analyze, and improve your SEO strategy.

When it comes to your digital marketing, organic search methods powered by SEO are unmatched in terms of longevity and cost-effectiveness. SEO is more cost-effective than paid advertising, and its results also last longer. While PPC campaigns require renewals and have variable bidding expenses, SEO tracking tools generate keyword lists based on organic data and generate fresh content ideas as you go deeper.

To be honest, SEO can initially feel like a slow burn. However, after a few months, you should start to notice significant improvements in your overall traffic and rankings. Additionally, the more time you invest in it, the more backlinks and site authority you develop, allowing you to target increasingly bigger and better keywords, and so on.

Targeting long-tail keywords and their more specialized variations, particularly in relation to content and certain subtopics, is a great approach for SMBs to start at the opposite end of the spectrum and gain traction. More than one-third of all Google search queries consist of four or more words, sometimes known as long-tail keywords.

Read Also: The Art and Science of Topic Clusters: A Comprehensive Guide

Not only are these keywords less competitive and therefore easier to rank for, but they can also still drive plenty of cumulative traffic organically.

Best Tips to Build an Effective SEO Strategy

It’s not always necessary to aim for the most well-liked search phrases and assume that you can outperform the big fish straight away. The key is to understand your audience and make an effort to give them the information, content, and general services they require or desire.

In light of this, the following eight SEO pointers remain as relevant now as they did back then.

1. Write for humans first and search engines second

As mentioned already, the Google algorithm gets smarter by the day and using constant human input, continues to better align with our thinking. That being said, there is no clever loophole or magic formula to outwit a search engine, so don’t bother trying. Write for humans first and search engines second.

Ultimately, your priority should always be to provide your audience with what they are looking for, and that only comes through writing engaging and fundamentally naturalistic content. Anyone can spot a keyword that’s been shoehorned in and stuffing is even more blatant, so fit them in where it makes sense and allow driving keywords to elevate your already informative and valuable content.

2. Use targeted keywords in all the right places

Whilst the motivation should always be humans first, and search engines second, the bedrock of this whole process is keywords. Not only do they get to the heart of what visitors and Google are looking for by isolating common search terms, but SEO also drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media, which itself dominates over half of all online traffic. So, if keywords are at the heart of SEO, they should be at the heart of everything you do, too.

However, once again, it isn’t about just chucking them in left, right, and center. It all starts with keyword research. Use SEO tools like Google Ads, Ahrefs, and even simple on-site search bars to identify broad search intent and your “seed” keywords. Then dig deeper to find more long-tail variants, study competitors to find keyword gaps, and don’t forget to include them in your metadata as well as the anchor text for your links. Lastly, remember not to keyword stuff. Fit them in naturally so as not to disrupt the readability of your copy.

3. Focus on user experience (UX)

There is nothing worse than having to navigate a site that you can barely use. In fact, after more than a few seconds of frustration, most people don’t bother and Google will struggle to make the best out of it too. Things like dead links, error pages, and messy site structures will all impact what people take away from your website.

Not only do users value a good experience and easy navigation, but this seamlessness also helps Google’s crawlers scan your content and determine your SERP rankings. Use headings and short, easy to read paragraphs, tidy up your sub-folders, and optimize for mobile. All of these things will help to reduce your bounce rate, improve your rankings, and generate better conversion overall.

And now that Core Web Vitals have become a ranking factor via the page experience update, you should be optimizing page speed more than ever.

4. Focus on building relevant links

As mentioned, another key aspect in building domain reputation/site authority is link-building. We’ve already touched upon why outbound/external links are important: you not only enhance the information you are providing but you can receive reciprocal backlinks through outreach, etc.

Furthermore, links are a key ranking factor. Bots/crawlers discover content by following links through to subsequent pages and judging how relevant they are to a search query. This goes for internal linking as well, so don’t be afraid to link to other useful pages on your site where necessary and where it feels natural. 51% of marketers notice an impact after one to three months of implementing a link-building strategy.

5. Format content for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets pretty much rule SERPs these days. It’s likely that you’re familiar with them even if you haven’t heard the term before. They are the highlighted answer boxes that appear at the top of the pages for most search queries. If you manage to earn a featured snippet, you’re doing something right.

There are certain formatting and stylistic choices you can make to up your chances of landing a featured snippet: bullet points, numbered lists, infographics, and answering question-based searches directly, to name a few. Whilst there is data that shows snippets don’t always result in direct clicks, as the search query is answered in the Google preview itself, over 19% of SERPs have featured snippets and counting. They are great for raising brand awareness and getting your name out there. Therefore, the clicks will still come.

6. Remove anything that slows down your site

Once again, it can’t be overstated how simple it is to get the technical stuff right in order for your website and specific content to speak for itself. Whether you’re writing informative blogs, selling a product/service, or simply pointing someone in the right direction, your site needs to be quick, accessible, and easy to use. These days, people expect instant information and instant results. If your site takes an age to load, they’ll simply move on.

There are a number of ways you can improve site speed and the overall smoothness of your UX: delete old/defunct plugins, clean up your code, optimize and compress your images, make sure your sub-folders flow and make sense, and use tools like Google Page Speed Insights or GTmetrix to continue monitoring in the future.

7. Pay attention to Google algorithm updates

We’ve briefly touched on this already but Google gets smarter and more intuitive by the day. The core updates and tweaks to the algorithm are constant and often unexpected, with sites either benefitting or being penalized for how closely they adhere to the most recent update.

Rankings and penalties are determined by a variety of factors: accessibility, speed, excessive advertising or spammy content, etc. Whilst it can’t always be avoided, there are a few easy steps you can take to stay in touching distance. Firstly, subscribe to industry websites and forums to keep track of recent/impending updates. Google’s Search Console Community is a good start – and make sure to closely track your traffic using services like Google Analytics and SEMrush to see where updates may have occurred, so you can then adjust accordingly.

8. Improve existing content & add missing subtopics

Lastly, you need to remember that there is no real finish line when it comes to your SEO strategy. Constant updates and battling with your competitors means that there’s always work to be done, not to mention that you can still improve on what you’ve done already. If you haven’t been using SEO properly already, going back and updating content with keywords, backlinks, and better readability is a great way to get started. You can even ensure that pages that have been performing better maintain traffic growth or build upon that standard by regularly updating them.

Circling back to your keyword research, this is a great opportunity to use these phrases and competitor analysis as the basis for a long-term content plan. Each keyword should branch off into a plethora of others and with that comes more ideas for content. Rather than writing, say, one piece of a specific topic, make it a ‘cornerstone’ article from which a number of other more specific ones spawn.

A proper content audit can be done using tools like SEMrush and Yoast; adding and updating old content can double your traffic —just try to make it as evergreen as possible and be sure to use that internal and external linking we talked about.

How can I Get 1000 Visitors to my Website?

Websites are the lifeblood of modern enterprises, yet momentum is difficult to develop from nothing. It’s not a given that you’ll be able to develop an audience that will support your continued efforts, even if you have a great company idea and excellent content to support it.

Your first thousand visitors—the first thousand people to find and use your website—will be one of the most significant turning points in the early phases of its development. Reaching that target and holding on to that audience should make it easy for you to grow even bigger.

Thus, what makes the first thousand visits so crucial, and how can you attract them?

Why is the first thousand visitors so important, when most entrepreneurs are looking for long-term gains and sustainability?

• The hardest phase.
  Understand that more than 90 percent of all internet startups fail, and the majority of those failed companies fail in their earliest stages of development; once you have an established stream of traffic and revenue in place, it’s much easier to recover from a mistake or get through a period of disinterest.
  
  In the early stages of building your company, you’re much more vulnerable, which makes the first thousand visitors the hardest to achieve. Accordingly, if you can make it past this phase, you’ll have a much higher likelihood of succeeding in future phases.
  
• Early momentum.
  Your first thousand visitors are also important for generating some early momentum. Typically, your site’s first few months will be its most vulnerable, so if you can find some early adopters who are truly passionate about your brand, they’ll be likely to stick around for the long term.
  Among those thousand visitors will be brand evangelists, who share your idea with other people, and brand loyalists, who keep coming back for more. Your chances of getting highly dedicated people in a pool of 100 are far lower.
  
• Testing the idea.
  Your first thousand visitors also count as a live test of your business idea. Before you invest too much money or get too involved, you should be able to determine whether your idea has the capacity to scale.
  
  If your first thousand visitors are easy to attract and they love your idea, you’ll know you’re onto something. If they’re hard to attract and they don’t stick around, you’ll know you need to readdress your idea and your presentation; you can even use their feedback as a tool to make the site better for future audiences.

So how are you going to attract those first thousand visitors? There are a handful of phases you’ll need to work through to get there.

Choosing the Value

People will only visit a website if it has something valuable to offer them, so your first job is choosing something that your audience wants. There are a handful of options here, all of which are perfectly valid, but some of which are valuable for some brands more than others:

• Content.
  Some sites build an audience based solely on the high-quality content they provide, whether it’s blog posts, infographics, or videos. Generally, these sites make money through advertising, affiliate links, or other traffic redirection techniques.
  
• Functionality.
  You could also offer some specific functionality that others can’t, such as a social media platform’s ability to help you meet other people, or a game’s ability to entertain you. There’s a wide range of options here, but they must all be valuable to users in some way if they’re going to succeed.
  
• Products and services.
  A more direct route to generating revenue online is selling products and services directly. So long as there’s sufficient demand here, this can be the “value” that your website offers. Just make sure you have something unique, tailored to a specific target audience, and are selling it for a fair value.

Designing the Site Effectively

Once you have an idea of that value in place, you’ll need to spend some time and money designing your site effectively. If you have a solid value basis to offer your customers, but your site is poorly designed, you might still send some people away.

• Choosing the right builder.
  There are dozens of free and inexpensive website builders available for entrepreneurs and marketers these days, and many of them have strong templates to use when designing your site.
  
  However, you’ll still need to make your decision carefully. Make sure you review the top website builders, and evaluate their pre-designed templates as objectively as possible. Most templates allow you to make some significant changes, but you’ll still need good architecture in place to get started.
  
• Branding.
  You also need to make sure your branding is present and obvious throughout your site, manifesting as logos, colors, fonts, and graphic elements that all speak to the core values and characteristics of your brand.
  
  If you aren’t sure what those are, you’ll need to spend some time defining what your brand is, and why it should appeal to your target audience. From there, you’ll be able to work those elements into your core pages and ensure that all your imagery and writing falls in line.
  
• Originality.
  Templates are quick and relatively easy to use, but there’s one serious downside: they’re used by hundreds if not thousands of other companies. You’ll want to make sure there are at least some elements in your design that set you apart from your competitors (and most other sites out there). Otherwise, you won’t be memorable.
  
• Functionality.
  If you’re using a website builder and have a good hosting plan, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about the functionality of your site. However, it’s still important to ensure your site works well on all platforms and for all devices; for example, make sure your content loads quickly and easily on mobile and desktop devices equally, and double check your links to make sure they work as expected.
  
• Connective potential.
  Be sure there are at least some onsite elements that encourage people to connect with one another. For starters, you’ll want to make sure all your blog posts and products are equipped with a social share button that allows people to easily share the content with their followers on various social media platforms. Depending on the nature of your site, you may also want to include a customer-centric forum that allows people to engage with one another directly.

Proliferating Your Presence

Once you have a well-designed core website established, your next job will be building out your presence online with outlets like:

• Social media.
  Claim your brand’s presence on all the major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.), even if you don’t plan to use them. Flesh out your profiles to maximize your discovery potential, and start making connections with people you know. If you can, plan to syndicate your content to these channels at least a few times a week to build up interest.
  
• Personal brands and partner sites.
  You can complement your efforts by also building up personal brands related to your core brand. For example, as CEO, you might use your personal social media profiles to share your site’s main content and increase your range of influence. Similarly, you can partner up with other young sites to share each other’s content and build up your mutual circles.
  
• Guest posts.
  Once you have some strong blog posts on your site, you can start shopping around for guest posting opportunities; guest posting is a powerful strategy for building your influence and reputation, earning backlinks to your site for SEO, and generating ongoing referral traffic. It’s a bit tricky to get started, but if you can establish a flow and work your way up to higher authority publishers, this can be a source of enormous traffic figures.

Marketing and Advertising

Even with an “established” online presence, you’ll need to work hard to market and advertise your site. There are dozens of different blanket strategies here, but these are some of the most popular and accessible for getting your first thousand website visitors:

• Press releases.
  You can start by writing up some press releases announcing your new site, and covering any newsworthy events your company is a part of. There’s a specific format to follow here, and you’ll have to pay a few hundred dollars unless you try to do the distribution yourself, but this can easily net you a few hundred initial visitors if not more.
  
• Search engine optimization (SEO).
  SEO is a collection of tactics that ultimately increase your site’s likelihood of ranking for relevant searches in Google and other search engines. It’s a topic unto itself, but you can get started with some basic keyword optimization strategies, ongoing site content, and building backlinks through guest posts.
  
• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads. You can also generate traffic by leveraging PPC ads. You’ll have to front some money here, but since you’ll only pay for the clicks you generate, you’re guaranteed to get some initial traffic.

What are the Top SEO Strategies?

An SEO strategy is a plan to create, optimize, and promote content to improve its visibility in search engine results, attracting more organic traffic to a website. It involves a variety of techniques, such as keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and link building.

In other words: an SEO strategy is the process that you follow when you want to get more organic traffic. Below, we have provided five SEO strategies that offer the best ROI, and how you can use them to generate better returns and more revenue for your business.

1. Maintain a fast, mobile-friendly website

A fast and mobile-friendly (or responsive) website is essential. When it comes to determining where your site ranks in search results, Google looks at page speed and mobile-friendliness. If you have a slow site or a site that doesn’t display correctly on mobile devices, you can count on lower rankings.

When you think about SEO and ROI, rankings are critical. If you don’t rank well in search results, you can’t attract the traffic necessary to generate an ROI from SEO. For perspective, around 95% of search traffic goes to the first page of search results, which means a page-one ranking is critical.

Maintaining a fast and mobile-friendly site can help your business rank on page one. If you want to see how a fast and mobile-friendly website will benefit your bottom line — and SEO ROI — use Google’s “Test My Site” tool. This tool measures your mobile site’s speed and calculates how much revenue your business could get with a faster website.

Speeding up your website usually involves the following:

• Compressing site images
• Using external video hosting sites like YouTube
• Minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Enabling browser caching
• Reducing server response times

While you can probably take care of compressing images and creating a YouTube account, other fixes like improving server response times and minifying code will require the help of a developer. If a developer isn’t available to help, our U.S.-based team of developers can help. They can take a look at your site, find page speed opportunities, and implement fixes so you have a faster website that can rank higher in search results.

Like page speed optimization, mobile-friendly or responsive web design will require the help of a design and development team. While you can use website builders like WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace, it’s vital to check their SEO-friendliness beforehand.

Alternatively, you can invest in professional web design that includes SEO optimizations.

2. Target long-tail keywords

Keywords are a core component of SEO (and improving your SEO). Finding relevant keywords, determining the search intent of those keywords, and mixing those keywords into your content and meta tags, will not only help people find your website but also help your content rank in search results. You can choose from two types of keywords:

• Long-tail keywords: A long-tail keyword is three to four words, like “arabica coffee beans 12oz.”
• Short-tail keywords: A short-tail keyword is one to two words, like “coffee beans.”

Get the best ROI from SEO by researching and targeting long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords help your SEO strategy because they have less competition. Fewer people search for “arabica coffee beans 12oz” because it’s specific and caters to a specific search intent.

In comparison, lots of people search for “coffee beans” because it’s general and captures a broad search intent.

Not to mention, long-tail keywords target more specific search intents. Someone searching for coffee beans may want to know:

• How to choose coffee beans
• Which brands produce the best coffee beans
• How to use coffee beans
• What types of coffee beans to purchase

In comparison, someone searching “arabica coffee beans 12oz” is likely looking for someone that sells arabica coffee beans in a 12-ounce package. They know exactly what they want. That’s why your business wants to target and rank well for long-tail keywords.

These keywords help your company reach people looking for products or services like yours. Instead of trying to bring as much traffic as possible to your website, you’re bringing the most qualified traffic, which means more leads, sales, and revenue for you. KeywordsFX is an excellent tool for finding long-tail keywords — and it’s free.

Just enter a starter keyword, like Arabica Coffee, and KeywordsFX will produce a list of related keywords, including questions that feature your keyword.

You can also copy your results to save them for later or export them to view in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Finding and researching keywords is a process, and it’s only the beginning when it comes to SEO. If you feel intimidated or overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to ask for help from someone who specializes in SEO, like WebFX.

3. Optimize local listings

While local SEO matters more to some companies than others, local search still deserves a spot in your SEO roadmap— especially if you’re looking to increase your ROI from SEO. That’s because local listings serve as a discovery and research hub for users. Searching for takeout in your area, for instance, will generate a list of potential businesses in Google search results.

The same will happen when researching a company, whether it’s a restaurant or software provider.
You want a presence in those search results because you’ll share with searchers your:

• Phone number
• Hours
• Website
• And more

This information makes it super easy for searchers — your future customers — to visit your site, learn about your offerings, and contact your team. Each of these actions helps a user move one step closer to conversion. For the best return on this strategy, claim and optimize all your local listings.

Read Also: Types of SEO in Digital Marketing

You can use a local listing management tool like LocalFX to streamline this process. It’ll take all your basic information, like name, address, phone number, and more, and auto-update your local listings for you.

If you’re looking for local listing management help that goes beyond tools, we maintain an in-house, U.S.-based team of more than 500 SEO specialists. From managing your local listings to optimizing your local SEO, we will help you reach more people in your area.

4. Create helpful content (and optimize it for SEO)

Content not only helps potential leads and shoppers get to know your business, but it also helps your company improve its SEO ranking, which is essential to attracting traffic and sales. You can produce a variety of content, including:

• Blog posts
• Product pages
• Videos
• Guides
• And more

For the best ROI from SEO, it’s essential to create content for users and search engines. That means producing helpful, informative content that also follows SEO best practices. For example, a blog post explaining how to ground coffee beans could include images or GIFs to help readers learn how to ground coffee beans while also featuring an optimized title tag, like, “How to Ground Coffee Beans: 3 Easy Options.” When planning content, remember to focus on evergreen content topics.

Evergreen content doesn’t age as fast as other content. People will always have questions about how to grind coffee beans, for example, and the answer will generally stay the same. That kind of content will continue to generate website traffic and serve as a touchpoint in your audience’s path to purchase.

In comparison, a time-sensitive topic, like coffee bean shortages, will age out fast and attract no traffic. Your business doesn’t want to invest its time or money in this kind of content because it will diminish your ROI from SEO substantially. Instead, focus on evergreen topics, and optimize them for users and search engines.

If you need help developing and creating evergreen content for your website, WebFX features a dedicated team of SEOs, copywriters, and graphic designers who can work with you to produce long-lasting, A+ content for your site.

5. Re-optimize past content

Content refresh and re-optimization matters to your SEO ROI for three critical reasons:

1. Content decays over time: Outdated content can lead to lower rankings in search results because searchers (and search engines) recognize that it’s old, whether due to its published date or information, which can make it irrelevant to a user’s search.
2. Content carries long-term value: Updating evergreen content can maximize its value and impact on your bottom line. Content updates, for instance, can help a blog post or product page go from page two to page one.
3. Search intent evolves: New technology, regulations, and standards can all shift search intent. Updating your content to account for these changes can help keep it fresh and relevant, as well as ranking high in search results.

For the best results with this strategy, follow these tips:

• Start with pages that rank on pages one, two, or three
• Look at the search results to determine the search intent
• Conduct keyword research to find additional keywords to target
• Use the core keyword in the title tag and the first 100 words
• Update any outdated practices, studies, or statistics
• Check every page’s mobile-friendliness and page speed
• Add helpful images, videos, or GIFs

Once you update a page, submit a crawl request in Google Search Console. Google may take a few days or weeks to crawl the page, but when it does, it’ll see the updated information. Once this information enters its index, Google can move forward with tweaking its search results — and your position in them.

Re-optimizing content can seem like another to-do on an already long to-do list. It’s understandable, too. If that’s how you feel and you’re looking for help, WebFX can provide support through our award-winning SEO team.

And remember — measure your ROI

A tremendous benefit of digital marketing strategies like SEO is the ability to measure and track your results.

Getting the most value from this benefit, however, requires using the right tools, like Google Analytics. Here are a few tips for getting started with Google Analytics:

• Create a view that excludes traffic from your company
• Build custom goals, like for a contact form submission, and assign a value to it
• Use reports, like Behavior Flow, to understand how people interact with your site

Besides Google Analytics, you can also use MarketingCloudFX. This proprietary ROI-tracking software, which all our clients receive access to, makes measuring and monitoring the ROI of your SEO, as well as other online marketing strategies easy. It’ll import and break down Google Analytics data, plus data from other third-party tools, like Salesforce.

You can also access MarketingCloudFX on the go from your smartphone, which makes catching up on your strategy and its performance fast and simple. Together, these tools can make your life (and SEO ROI calculations) easier.