The reasoning behind introducing search engine optimization to your marketing strategy is simple: to be able to grow your business, you need to increase your customer base. To expand your customer base, you need to get noticed, and to achieve that, you need to work towards climbing the online rankings ladder.
If you want an easy and quick fix whose effect will wear off just as quickly, you can choose paid advertising. However, if you are looking for long-term effects, reaching the top of the first search results page, and staying there, your best chances lie with SEO. So, let’s take a look at what different SEO techniques can do for your business’s online presence.
CONSIDER VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION
Modern-day people are busy: their schedule is full and the pace of life has increased significantly so they are always on the lookout for ways to decrease time spent on menial tasks. This is why automation is in full bloom in every area of our lives, from the office to the kitchen. Voice search has become popular for the same reason: it saves time on typing, especially if your hands are busy.
So, let’s say that people are making dinner, their hands are covered with flour and they need to check a recipe. It would be so much easier to simply use voice searchers than to wash their hands and type in the query.
Optimizing for voice search means having in mind that they are mostly in the form of questions (e.g. ‘How do I make bread?’) which means that you would also need to adjust your keywords and make them long-tail.
All in all, voice search optimization is currently a competitive advantage, and soon it will become a mandatory part of your SEO efforts.
WORK ON USER EXPERIENCE
When ranking websites, what Google ultimately wants to know is whether your website indeed offers the best results for a user’s query. If your website is experiencing a high bounce rate, from Google’s perspective, this indicates just the opposite because people would not be leaving your website so soon if it was otherwise.
However, aside from the content of your website, there are other reasons visitors are abandoning your website without even taking a good look at it.
One of the most common culprits is the loading speed. Firstly, because people generally have less patience, and secondly because they are aware that the online world is vast and that they might find similar products and services.
In addition to that, making content easier to read should be of your main tasks. Long chunks of text will drive your audience away, so make sure you divide the text into readable paragraphs, and to further facilitate the reading, you can add bullet points.
Strategies like these will make the visitors linger on your website which might lead to purchasing.
INSIST ON REGULAR BACKLINK ANALYSIS
Backlinking is an exceptional technique in terms of your SEO strategy. Backlinks are essentially the links from other websites that lead to your website and for search engines, they are a confirmation of your website’s quality and positive professional reputation. This is, of course, if the websites in question are reputable as well and this is where backlink analysis comes to play.
Backlink analysis helps you monitor and manage those backlinks because if you get associated with spammy websites, the fact that you are a rising local startup respectable in Hong Kong will not do you much good. Luckily, both local and global businesses can nowadays find agencies that offer professional SEO services in Hong Kong or any other part of the world that can improve their backlinking via a thorough backlink analysis.
Seeking the help of experts is often the best course of action a business can take, especially if they lack experience in a certain field.
LEARN FROM CONTENT GAPS
If you have been in the business for some time, chances are that you are certain you have covered all topics that could possibly interest your target audience. However, whether you believe it or not, this is often not the case. Content gaps analysis deals with just that, the content that you haven’t covered and that your customers need information about.
One of the strategies to optimize your content further is to set up an internal site search because, in that manner, you will be able to track the most frequent queries. You will also learn about what they cannot find on your website and those gaps are exactly what needs to be filled to enrich your SEO strategy.
LEVERAGE SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media plays an essential role in any business’ online presence. Communication and socializing have slowly migrated to the planes of the internet so it is expected for businesses to have profiles on different social media channels. Additionally, a successful online business needs to maintain communication with its customers on a regular basis.
Besides boosting user engagement, social media profiles offer other benefits. Namely, a useful technique you can implement is sharing your website content on your profiles. If you tend to your profiles, spreading the word about your services or products in this way will lead to them being shared by your followers. This strategy will raise awareness about your brand, increase your website traffic, and help you grow your business.
FINAL THOUGHTS
SEO is, without a doubt, one of the best strategies you can implement to improve your business’s online presence. What you need to do is take a hard look at your present situation and assess which of the listed techniques would fit your business best. You might choose one or you might end up combining them but the important thing is that you will be actively nurturing your online presence with the best strategies.