Despite having a presence for years, Search Engine Optimization is finally gaining momentum and popularity, especially among small business owners. In 2016, business owners are fully aware of search engine optimization: they know what it is and why it needs to be implemented in their digital marketing strategy.
Owners of small businesses understand that if they want to attract and generate new clients, it is imperative that their websites and blog posts rank high within Google. While it is great that they understand the importance of high quality content, small business owners may actually be impeding their progress – in a matter of speaking.
If you’re like me, you probably read daily articles about the latest SEO innovations and gimmicks – ways to better ensure that your content ranks high within Google. But someone who is not trained in the practice of Search Engine Optimization may complicate the process. People find themselves ignoring basic SEO fundamentals because they are too busy focusing on these gimmicks.
While these tactics are certainly helpful, there are three basic SEO fundamentals that you cannot ignore because it serves as a solid foundation and starting point for your SEO strategy. You don’t need to be an expert in SEO when creating content; you just need to remember these three important points.
Think Like a Search Engine
Search Engines have two major functions: crawling and building an index of web pages, and providing users with a ranked list of pages that answer their questions. Search Engines, like Google, have always emphasized high quality, useful content that satisfies your target audience and compels them to come back to your site and share it with others
Google constantly updates its search algorithm to put more weight on rewarding sites with useful, unique and informative content. To put it simply, the web pages that deserve to be at the top of Google will be.
If you want your content to rank high within Google, you need to play by Google’s rules. While creating your content, remember these two helpful hints:
- A great post with no SEO will do better than a poor post with SEO.
- No matter how much you optimize your posts with gimmicks, your content will not rank if it is worthless.
In other words, you need to write content that is search-engine friendly and useful to a visitor.
Think Like a Human
If you want your content to rank high within Google, try thinking like the person using the search engine. Consider this: Has a search engine ever bought anything from your business? Unless computers are becoming smarter, then the answer is probably not. People are the ones who buy from you, so you should be writing for them. If you want to delight visitors into using your services, your content needs to show them all the benefits you offer while providing answers to their questions.
You also need to be aware of how a human may use search engines. Anyone utilizing search engine optimization creates content around an optimized keyword. But what’s really important is to think about a phrase that prospects may type into the search engine to find your content. This is probably a longer, several-word phrase, which may be in the form of a question. Once you come up with this longer phrase, you need to employ it through your content such as in your headline, URL, meta-description and throughout the actual content itself.
Think About Engaging Content
Attracting customers to your website with content is only half the battle; the other half is keeping them on your website. To ensure that visitors stay on your website, your content needs to be engaging. This requires some creativity because you cannot simply reinvent the wheel. Instead of writing an article, try changing up the format of your posts with videos, slideshows, images or audio.
Furthermore, you need to structure each post so that it is easy for the reader to absorb information. This includes bullet points, subheadings, short paragraphs and sentences that vary in length and are at your visitors reading level. Remember, no matter how much content you post, your prospects will read what they want and find interesting. If you want your readers to be interested in your content, you need to make sure it is engaging. For help, contact the experts at Premiere Creative and give us a call at (973) 346-8100.