Search engine optimization (SEO) is a big buzzword in digital marketing and is often thrown about and its importance exclaimed. However, many people and businesses end up getting it wrong because they fail to do their research or they simply stop putting in the time and effort after a few weeks or months of limited change.

SEO is a continuous and constantly evolving process and that’s why it takes time to see results and to genuinely improve your rankings for targeted keywords and phrases. Many businesses dismiss SEO as a subset of information technology (IT) and forget about the fundamentals of marketing. Whilst it may be based on digital technology, SEO it is still a marketing process and thus the fundamentals of marketing shouldn’t be forgotten when practicing it.

Let’s take a quick look at some key steps to help you achieve SEO success.

Create a list of topics :

Without a core set of topics, it is going to be difficult to make any SEO progress. The topics are your starting point and allow you to build on your products or service areas. These topics should relate directly to what you are selling and categorize each area of your business.

By categorizing areas of your business you are able to better target each audience with a specific campaign that that given market can relate to or sees a need in. This list of topics will help to build your strategy and you should have a goal in mind for each topic.

Build a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics :

Once you have identified your topics then it is time to find the relevant keywords for these topics. Think about what you would search for if you were a customer looking for your business. Try and put yourself in the customer’s shoes so that you identify those keywords which are the most relevant customers.

Try and use a lot of long-tail keywords, those that are more like phrases, rather than single words. This helps you to out-compete competition as it is a more specific search but it is also more in line with today’s search trends. People are now using longer phrases in their searches because it is easier and because of the introduction of smart speakers, allowing people to speak their questions to AI assistants. This means you want to have a number of long-tail keywords for each topic along with some short-tail keywords.

Create pages for each topic/keyword :

Depending on how many keywords you have for each topic and how many sub-categories you have on each topic, you will want to create a page for each. This is what helps you to get found on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Having pages dedicated to each topic that contain your keywords enables customers to find you more easily and will help your business to rise up the rankings as it is seen as relevant and helpful based on given searches.

Know your audience :

This is one of the marketing fundamentals mentioned earlier. Knowing your audience is crucial to successfully target the right keywords, at the right times and providing a service that people want. You need to understand exactly what your customers want so that your website and pages can answer these questions, allow them to find their needs and be easy to navigate. There are so many different targeting factors that can be used for keywords such as location, calls to action, conversions , nd frequency that it is important that you have a clear idea of your audience(s) for each keyword or topic so that you can get the most from your SEO.

Create a blog :

The final point is to create a blog. A blog is a great way to build authority through generating links, both internal and external, and attracting as much traffic to your website as possible. Blogs can be highly informative mediums for your customers and if your customers are informed and like the information that you provide them with then they are more likely to purchase from you.

The blog content doesn’t need to be complex and it doesn’t necessarily have to be product or service related, but it should have something to do with the industry and/or activities that the business offers or facilitates.

Whilst this isn’t a complete guide to SEO success, it does highlight a few key points that are necessary to ensure that your business appears attractively and frequently to the right people in search results.

Read Also :

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