Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has fast become one of the most sought-after marketing services for nearly every business and industry. It’s not uncommon for agencies to dedicate entirely to the art of SEO. And for good reason.
Organic traffic can be hard to attract, but it results in some of the most qualified leads you can get.
Why? Through search engines, you’re attracting people who are already actively looking for what you’re offering, allowing you to skip straight to the middle of the funnel. Data shows time spent on a website is so much higher when visitors come organically because they are genuinely interested. SEO makes the chances of landing a valuable lead that much higher.
In a time where everyone turns to Google for answers to every little question (we’re talking 7 billion hits a day), if you’re not on it, you’re not being seen.
SEO is a vital, long-term marketing tactic
Google is constantly changing its algorithm, making hundreds of changes a year. These changes alter what ‘good’ SEO looks like. So, building a website and an online presence and hoping for the best just won’t cut it if you want to be competitive.
SEO is built to improve the experience of the searcher, ensuring they get what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. But when approached properly, it can also give businesses the power to find exactly the right buyer for them
SEO strategy is a long game, and SEO needs to be constantly monitored, maintained and updated. It requires some serious upfront work and commitment to make sure you’re where you need to be.
But saying that, there are a couple of things you can do that will immediately boost your SEO stats and help build your longer strategy while you work on the bigger picture.
3 steps for quick SEO results
1. Do an audit
This is the first step to building any SEO strategy. Doing it right away, even if you haven’t thought about your larger strategy yet, will give you better visibility of where you are, and also what you’re up against. An audit will show you:
- If you’re ranking and what you’re ranking for
- What your keywords are or should be
- An understanding of what’s already working.
2. See which pages are performing best
Eventually you will want to optimise most of the pages on your website (or create pillar pages). But seeing which pages are performing the best right now will tell you what your audiences deem the most valuable, and how they’re prioritising pages on your site. You can use this insight to guide keyword research, and decide where you should focus your attention first for the best short-term return.
3. Focus on onsite SEO
There are three types of SEO – onsite, offsite and technical. All of them play into your overall SEO strategy, but onsite SEO is the easiest to accomplish without the help of specialists, and will offer the quickest results. Onsite SEO refers to details on each page and should include updating the copy on your (most popular) pages. This includes:
- Page copy
- Title and headings
- Metadata
What can you expect to see?
If you’ve put the right time and effort into auditing your website, your keywords, your competitors, and updating your copy, you likely won’t have to wait long to see an improvement.
You’ll want to make sure you’re using a platform to track SEO performance (Moz and SEMRush are two good examples, but there are plenty to choose from). And, after a couple of weeks, you can expect to see a few things:
- A rise in your rankings
- A rise in page visits
- A rise in time on page
These will, of course, vary depending on the level of your previous SEO. If you lacked clear keywords or an SEO strategy, these simple changes could make a huge difference in your ranking and page visits.
Simply by attributing the right keywords to the right page, Google immediately sees your pages as superior. Google is moving away from being super literal towards a more contextual base for giving users a better experience. That means the right keywords on the right page will give your audience a better chance of finding you, even if they aren’t being specific. So you can avoid mechanical repetition of phrases in your pages.
On top of this, having these basics in operation will set you up for a better performing and better planned long-term content strategy. Once you get the hang of SEO and get the grunt work done, it’s much easier to be successful in the long run. SEO is the best long-term, low-cost marketing investment you can make.
SEO should be part of your marketing plan and execution. If you need assistance getting started or building a long-term plan that will get results, it pays to talk to a professional. align.me is a full-service outsourced marketing agency with SEO specialists on hand to help build, optimise, and maintain your SEO. Click here to see our range of SEO services, or here to chat with one of the team.
