The contemporary business environment is tougher than ever. When Canadian-born Marshall McLuhan coined the term a global village in the 1960s not many people would have foreseen its impact in determining the future of business. Today companies are faced with more competition from brands across the globe which calls for the innovative approach to marketing.
Luckily, advances in internet technology have now made it easier for small firms to compete on a level playing ground. With a vibrant online presence, it is now possible for small businesses to grow rapidly and even surpass their more established competition. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are over 3.2 billion internet users today.
Leveraging Growing Internet User Numbers
To leverage the growing internet user numbers your business must have a professionally designed website but that’s not the end of it. To capitalize on the blossoming internet market your website has to rank highly on search engine result pages (SERPs) for your targeted keywords. This calls for a solid search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
The Place of SEO in Your Business
A study by Forrester Research in 2015 shows 87% of internet users do not go beyond the 1st page of SERPs. Another study published on the Search Engine Journal (SEJ) shows SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate compared to only 1.7% close rate for other inbound marketing strategies.
A study by Outbrain shows search is the major driver of traffic to websites which means high ranking will boost your chances of converting. With organic search dominating the number of clicks generated online it is crucial to ensure your SEO strategy is viable.
This means if your website is not ranking highly you have to build a strong SEO strategy. While there are many online resources on SEO you have to appreciate the role of a qualified professional to manage your SEO campaign. An SEO expert has the prerequisite resources and expertise to use latest tools to guarantee higher ranking on SERPs and enhance user experiences on your website.
Best SEO Practices Today
If you are struggling to gain a footing on the internet market it is highly likely you don’t have an SEO strategy. Most website owners believe a fantastic looking website is all they need to attract traffic. However, Google says that while over a million websites are built daily only 52% of these actually make any revenue. One reason for this is the fact that these websites are not visible on SERPs.
By hiring an SEO consultant you will be able to implement the best SEO practices to guarantee increased sales conversion, better user experience, and brand recognition. Here are some of these SEO practices your SEO consultant should deploy:
Higher Standards For Creating Content
It is no secret that content is king when it comes to online marketing. However, there are very different standards expected of any content builder today. You have to make your content stand out and not just through ‘how to’ articles. In essence, you have to create longer content aimed at comprehensively aiding the user in finding what they want from your website.
Crawl Budget
This is a technical SEO hack but one that is easy to understand. Google allocates crawl budget to every website. If you have a large number of pages to be crawled you end up exhausting this budget. While Google is committed to crawling as many pages as possible don’t expect it to be able to crawl an infinite number of pages every day. Simply put a no index/no follow tag on those pages that are not very important for ranking.
Mobile-friendly Website
An SEO expert must ensure your site is mobile-friendly. This is even more important today as Google plans to go live with its plan to individually rank mobile websites and also penalize sites that are not mobile-friendly.
Influencer Marketing
This has become a big trend in SEO over the last few years. Today you can boost your brand using influencer marketing and the beauty of it is the fact that you don’t break the bank to achieve this. By aligning yourself with influencers you will expand your site’s link profile, grow site traffic and increase visibility. All these will help you achieve your SEO marketing goals.
Other key practices include using ROI analysis and tracking, providing excellent technical support, leveraging competitive analysis, and focusing on organic SEO techniques such as high content creation.
SEO audit by TemplateMonster Service Center
Do you need your website be visible to your target audience in search engines and you don't know where to start? SEO audit is the first step to creating an online marketing strategy that really works. You will get the analysis and guidelines on how to implement the given recommendations within your website.
