SEO Tips and Tricks
SEO: Quick Wins for Organic Search Traffic
There will be approximately 18,900,000 Google searches performed while you read this article
As marketers, we always have competing priorities for both our time and budget. One of the largest areas this becomes problematic is when we are trying to increase our keyword ranks and drive more organic search traffic to our site. Organic search traffic and all of our SEO efforts are critical pieces to directing traffic to our sites and help turn prospects into customers! Here are some of my favorite areas to look into when trying to find SEO opportunities.
Sitemap
A well-defined sitemap is critical for getting the pages that matter to your customers in front of them as quickly as possible. A sitemap should mimic the way a visitor would navigate your website. This holds all the web page details and information for pages you deem will be important to your site.
A search engine will crawl your site, meaning they will move through all the pages on your site to determine what the page is about and how search terms will relate to the page. A sitemap will serve as a roadmap for this process, telling the engine the easiest way to go through your site. If you don’t have a sitemap, set one up. The benefit of having one will help to prioritize your pages and get those critical pages indexed and ranking high.
Keyword Research and Optimization
There are a lot of free and paid keyword research tools out there. From a free perspective, I use Trends.Google.com to research keywords for trending search volume. This helps understand the potential traffic that you can generate from optimizing for these keywords.
From a paid perspective, I really enjoy SEMRush.com. They have some very strong keyword research tools and the ability to see how you compare to your competitors on any keywords. You can also easily see terms that your competition is ranking on where your site isn’t to identify weak points in your SEO strategy.
When doing research, I will find a group of about 10–20 related keywords that I want to optimize for. After confirming they have reasonable search volume based on my keyword research tools, I will use some of my favorite optimization techniques to raise my rankings as quickly as possible.
The techniques I have found to be the most effective for quick wins are content creation and answering questions, through a blog or organically on existing pages. Let’s explore these concepts through the eyes of a widget manufacturer.
Content Creation
One of the best ways to get ranking on keywords is to create content around those keywords. For instance, if I wanted to create content around selling widgets I would do a few different things. On my website, I would create a landing page specifically dedicated to widgets. There would also be a few blog posts created to help discuss what my widgets were, what made my widgets unique, a fun article about my favorite colored widgets and a write up about how my widgets are eco friendly.
If I thought my widgets would sell for over 12 months, I would create evergreen content about my widgets. Evergreen content is content that would be almost as relevant 2 years from now as it is today. Some examples of this content would be how were widgets invented, where does material for widgets come from and if widgets are safe to use outside.
Answer Questions
The more time I have spent reviewing countless pages and search terms for high performing keywords, the more I am convinced that answering the world’s questions gives you a big advantage over your competition for SEO and page ranking. In my widgets example, I would find commonly asked questions based on search trends. Examples of these questions could be:
· Where is the best place to buy widgets?
· Are widgets safe for dogs to eat?
· Can you use widgets inside?
· What are some unique uses for widgets?
Having found these questions, I would create individual pages for each of these questions. The major search engines like this content and answers to questions like these typically dominate the top of the organic rankings.
Long tail keywords
This is one of my favorite strategies that is often overlooked. Long tail keywords are three or more word phrases often searched for together. Let’s go back to our widget example for examples of long tail keywords:
- Widgets used in shoes
- Best widgets for tropical climates
- How to avoid rusty widgets
Once I had my handful of examples, the next step would be to make sure these phrases have regular searches on them. Then, creating pages that answer these questions or reworking content on existing pages would be the strategy to maximize organic search rankings. The other powerful thing about long tail keywords is they typically have lower competition and a higher conversion rate than more common and competitive search terms.
Conclusion
Organic search has a lot of attributes that are very strong and not easily replicated by other marketing channels, including:
- Organic traffic is FREE! Well besides the blood, sweat, tears and grind that go into winning this traffic.
- Study after study has shown that customers prefer organic listings over paid ads.
- Around 94% of all search traffic goes to organic results over paid ads.
- Click thru rate for the first two organic positions makes up 60% of all search engine clicks from desktop and 43% on mobile. https://www.advancedwebranking.com/ctrstudy/
There are few things I have done that have the long-term gain as SEO and maximizing my search efforts. Over time, the efforts I have invested into this area has become a machine for driving traffic to many sites I have been involved with. Keep up on search volume trends, the latest changes being implemented by the major search engines and constantly test new strategies to maximize your SEO efforts.
I am Dave Schafer, an always learning entrepreneur, CPA, experienced marketer, writer, father and husband. One of my large passions is all things digital marketing, an ever-changing field that offers so much upside done right. If you get stuck on a question or have any questions with digital marketing, email me directly at Dave2742@gmail.com. Thank you for reading my article and ABT (Always Be Testing)!
