As COVID-19 continues to prohibit most organizations from resuming business-as-usual, your online presence has never carried such weight. Today, we’ll take a closer look at one of the most critical factors of overall online success, and one of the best website practices: your SEO strategy.

A Closer Look at SEO

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a method of growing the quality and quantity of website traffic. The end goal of SEO is to ensure search engines and consumers can easily digest your website – from keywords and photos to meta-descriptions and more.

Why Does That Matter, Now?

An internet survey conducted by Pew Research Center has found that upwards of 91% of consumers use search engines to locate products and services – a trend that can only increase as users continue to log significant time online. If your website is not utilizing SEO techniques, your services and solutions may be harder for consumers to find you via search. Now more than ever, online visibility is crucial.

So, how can we better ensure search engines best serve your site? It’s simple. Search engines (and users) are looking for high-quality, relevant content.

What Does That Mean for My Site?

To better determine how SEO can benefit your business, let’s take a deeper dive – examining two types of SEO techniques. It is important to incorporate and understand both in order for your online efforts and website to succeed.

On-site SEO

On-site SEO, or on-page SEO, is described as the process of segmenting a website to increase its ranking and visibility. In other words, you’re making a page “relevant” or “search engine friendly.”

That entails optimizing or tweaking your website for search engine technology to easily crawl and understand the intended purpose of your content. From your HTML codes to the actual content on-page, on-site SEO is a crucial component to website success.

Content should be well written and relevant, so take a closer look at your on-page copy under this lens. When searching for your business or brand, what is your consumers’ intent? Seeking services? Free resources? How might they search for you?

All of these are important behaviors to keep in mind for SEO success.

Prioritize Video for SEO

While digital is ever-evolving, video remains a must-have for your website, especially when it comes to SEO. Why? Ultimately, pages with videos rank higher on SERPs, or search engine results page, by increasing click-through rates, lowering bounce rates, and creating better backlinks. Each of these is indicative of a healthy website.

Videos are also a great way to educate visitors. You can provide unique value, insight, information, and expertise through video content. Topics can include client testimonials, industry insights, service spotlights, behind the scenes, and more.

In terms of production, quality video is ideal but rest assured, you don’t need a full Hollywood crew for such efforts. Start small: a quick introduction to your company, or even linking LIVES from your social media channels.

Remember, this effort is worth it! Creating videos for your website makes it much easier for search engine technology to read and understand the purpose of your page.

Update Content Regularly

Keeping a consistent schedule when it comes to posting on your website is key – visitors associate outdated or stale content with a lack of professionalism, and ultimately, search engines can too. Consistency speaks to your commitment to your clientele and allows search engines to deem your content relevant, timely, and useful.

If you’re struggling to commit to regular white papers or blog updates, consider linking your social media pages so visitors may find a steady stream of content there.

Off-Site SEO

Off-site SEO refers to actions taken outside of your own website to positively impact your rankings within search engine results pages.

Backlinks

Search engines are looking to determine if your website and content are perceived valuable enough by other industry leaders to earn ‘backlinks’, an essential component of off-site SEO. Ultimately, backlinks, or a link created when one website links to another, play a significant role in ranking.

As search engines work to serve users with the most relevant, trustworthy, and authoritative content – backlinks act as a “vote of confidence” from other websites.

With search engine technology learning every day and getting smarter, it is important to adjust marketing efforts accordingly.

There are several benefits of backlinking such as assisting with gaining referral traffic. Organic searches account for a majority of traffic, but referral traffic is when people click on certain content leading them to other content. Referral clicks drive high-quality traffic without having a cost-per-click.

Backlinks create better exposure and brand recognition too. Such that when consumers are reading content and see your name, they can easily click on your brand or they are more likely to associate that content with your brand. Assuming the content they are reading is of high quality or relevant to the topic they are interested in.

How Can I Get Started with Backlinks?

Generated when one page links to another, backlinks are like a web. One side connects to another, and the more (quality) backlinks acquired, the higher the Google ranking may be. So, how can you take advantage of backlinks for your business?

Backlinks are earned and given, and the process of acquiring such links is known as link earning or link building. Essentially, acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own!

While it sounds clear-cut, link building is often considered one of the most challenging efforts of SEO. Not only will you need to create content that is link-worthy and link-able, but you’ll ideally connect with trusted websites to establish links. We’ve listed a few backlinking strategies that you can leverage within your SEO efforts, let’s take a look.

1. Links to Business Profiles

If your business has any profile outside of your website, make sure to highlight it. Remember quality over quantity – focus on the relevant content or profiles.

This includes social media pages, directories, website listings, as well as online reviews your business has.

2. Host and Publish a Webinar

Webinars are great pieces of content that are consumer and search engine friendly – in fact, adding quality webinars to your site can work wonders with your Google ranking.

Onsite and off-site SEO prioritizes video content on web pages because it often provides relevant resources, keeping users on the page longer. With a quality webinar, your consumers will actively interact with your content, increasing credibility from a search engine standpoint.

You want to shape these types of content like a blog post, embedding it within your site. Customers may even seek to use your webinar in their own blogging and social media, further benefiting your site’s ranking!

3. Link your Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials deserve ample space on your site, showcasing successful past projects and positive experiences. Whether your reviews and testimonials are in video or copy format, potential customers and search engines alike seek out such effort.

To best leverage these powerful marketing and SEO tools, consider asking previous customers for reviews and testimonials. Consider providing an incentive and highlighting your ask: honest feedback for a true reflection of your work and team.

4. Engage with your customers and followers

Whether the interaction takes place directly within your site or on various social media channels, engaging with your customers is crucial – and can actually be beneficial for your SEO efforts. Consider all engagement as an extension of your customer service: answering questions, responding to replies, blog comments, etc. For ultimate backlinking results, consider commenting and engaging with other relevant blogs brands have published.

As with any backlinking efforts, be mindful: avoid spamming or going for low-hanging, (less quality) fruit.

Link building and backlinks are essential components of offsite SEO success. Both play a major role in the way consumers and search engines interact with your content.

Summary

Leveraging SEO strategies to drive qualified traffic and measurable action is more crucial to business success today than perhaps ever before. Through careful optimizations and anticipation of your customer’s ever-evolving needs within their buying journey, you can ensure your business reaches the right customers – through COVID and beyond.

Are you ready to explore SEO efforts for your business? Let us help! Our full-service digital marketing firm can assist you with website development, ad campaigns, and we can help bring you to the first page of your consumer’s results page. Give us a call for a free business consultation at (800) 405-7119.