Digital marketing, on the other hand, involves a whole new bag of ‘tricks’. Marketing – not advertising – is the process of understanding consumer needs, of identifying their preferences and making user experiences a delight. This is not some fad-esque marketing cliche to jump aboard – it’s here to stay. The digital world is becoming more akin to our offline reality each day. As we immerse ourselves in those ongoing tasks and essentialities. All based within the confines of the vast online networks that we’ve so painstakingly woven for ourselves.
Our online existences are becoming increasingly invested in, both in terms of time and money. When they noticed that people were spending so much time in these online spaces brands began to put their websites out there.
How do brands manage to even get a word in when such spaces are dominated by influencers, competing websites, companies? Mind-boggling level of confusion that, this can bring to those who may have been born before the dawn of the digital era.
Google’s Growing Grip on the Internet
Take Google as just one example. In fact, let’s make Google the prime example. The overarching guide, encyclopedia to the internet that we all refer back to when we need to figure something out; to find snippets of information we might never have found in the first place.
The way we find those snippets of information has evolved since the conception of the internet – thankfully. We’ve refined the technological developments that have brought us search engines, nourished them with endless streams of data and questions. And helped their algorithms develop almost what could be referred to as a mind of their own. It’s these ever-fluid algorithms that search engine optimisation whizzes seek to engage with. To utilise search engines like Google to the best of our ability, to mold the websites that host the core being of brands and eventually, to lead to sales (Think of it as a digital open house. One where everyone is invited but only a dedicated few manage to find through the magic of search engines). Isn’t that the priority for many, if not all, businesses?
Inevitably, yes it is. But how do they get there?
In this little corner of the internet, we’re going to discuss how it all works. The answer is utilising SEO – Search Engine Optimisation.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the means through which many websites find their audiences. It might be how you found this article, even. It is an often undervalued skill, and while many business owners place preference on traditional means of advertising. Also, fast becoming the leading form of marketing that can quickly skyrocket websites towards the levels of online success they’ve been looking for.
It’s easy to anticipate that if you invest in a website, people will find it. That’s the ideal goal. Visually appealing and including all the information your consumers might be looking for. But what happens when your website gets lost amongst the masses?
Visibility is key here and Google is the digital billboard. It helps websites get their word out into that vast network of pixels and competitors.
Search engine optimisation specialists used plenty of techniques to manage to weave your website’s way into Google’s top SERPs. Utilising SEO is both technical and creative, innovative and considerate of the user. Utilise SEO to market your website by using both on-page and off-page SEO strategies by following the below ways.
On-Page SEO Strategies That Work
As the name suggests, ‘on page’ SEO strategies involve the techniques implemented directly on your website itself. However, the best on-page SEO techniques are not too readily noticed. Those effective behind the scenes operations can be technical and often involve scenarios like enhancing site speeds, improving website health, and eliminating SEO errors that diminish your website’s reputation in the eyes of Google.
Other more visible techniques involve elements such as content, incorporating high visibility keywords that usually fetch high search volumes and therefore, the potential for your website to be noticed. It’s a tricky balance to perfect, but with the right SEO experts, you can implement these on-page SEO strategies with ease. Here are a few of our top recommendations.
- Do a technical site audit.
Undertaking regular site audits is vital in ensuring your site health remains on top form, And that there aren’t any errors hindering your growth and visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). Site audits crawl your website for errors within site structure, coding issues. Also navigational issues (such as broken internal links), site speed problems like uncompressed photos, security issues – the lot.
- Identify your top keywords to focus on.
Doing keyword research (and getting it right) is one of the biggest factors in determining, Whether your on-page SEO strategy will push you to the top of those Google results pages. You’ve got to think like your potential consumers do. And to pinpoint those search terms they’ll really be looking for when they come to find your product.
- Concentrate on quality, keyworded content.
Your on-page content is instrumental in building the SEO success and utilising SEO of any website. Optimising your content with keywords involves more than just stuffing keywords in wherever you think they fit. In fact, keyword stuffing gets you penalised by Google. And afterwards you may struggle to even get a position on the front page. As well as this, over-stuffing will hugely diminish the quality of your content in the eyes of the consumer. It just won’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to skim on this part as it’s vital to maintaining a strong SEO approach.
Curating quality content is worth it in the long run. Your visitors will thank you for it, too. Sales may even increase as you include all that valuable information they’ve been looking for.
- Invest in position tracking and follow the data.
Tracking the position of your keywords on Google once you’ve strategically embedded them within your website content is crucial in determining what’s working, and what isn’t.
This is a long-term strategy for figuring out where your keywords are increasing traffic to and the visibility of your site in comparison with your competitors. Over time, you might find it beneficial to switch up parts of content to include more niche keywords, or to branch out and get those high search volume phrases in if you’re feeling a bit more competitive.
- Enhance user experience throughout your site.
Google naturally prefers to boost the visibility of those sites that are easy to navigate and use. Doing so is a bonus for them, reducing the potential for frustration after a visitor clicks through to a site that is just impossible to make sense of.
User experience is a core element to developing any website. Google favours sites with easy navigational structure, no broken links, easy-to-load website pages and the overall accessibility of each page. This includes accessibility factors like alternative texts on images, URL readability, clarity within heading structure, and so on.
Off-Page SEO Strategies That Work
- First, optimise your internal page structure.
Technically, this is an on-page SEO strategy. But it’s one that feeds into how Google determines the importance of your pages for backlinking purposes, and so it’s integral to your off-page SEO strategy too. Essentially, the more you link to an internal page within your website structure, the more Google will deem it a vital page within your website – and thus uplift its standing when you do begin earning those valuable backlinks. All of your internal pages must be carefully, intentionally interconnected in order for you to even begin thinking about off-page link building. Doing this beforehand paves the way for accurate determinations of the level of value your pages have.
A key tip we have here is that you should concentrate the most internal links pointing towards those pages that are most linked-to off-page. It’s also essential that you don’t leave any pages on your site ‘orphaned’ – that is, wher eno other internal pages link to them. This signifies to Google that the page is entirely irrelevant, and is actually flagged up as an error when running site audits.
- Invest in quality link building opportunities.
Now, on to the off-page stuff. Link building is where you work to construct webs of links that lead back to your website, in the name of boosting your reputation as Google’s crawl bots scour the web for hyperlinks that lead back to you.
Securing these positive links is great for driving organic traffic your way, but Google does monitor a few things. It scrutinises the reputation and ‘authority’ of the website that’s linked to you, so those high authority websites (think government-based, prominent news outlets) that link to you earn you more visibility overall. It’s important to remember that over-optimisation can also lead to your site being penalised, as with many utilising SEO-based mistakes that website owners have been tempted towards in the past.
- Investigate any brand mentions.
Brand mentions are pretty self-explanatory: it’s wherever another site has mentioned your brand’s name. These can be ‘linkless mentions’ that don’t include an a href link to your website, so unlike backlinking, this is strictly a reputational thing – but Google can monitor it. There are plenty of off-page SEO tools that help you locate brand mentions throughout the internet, you simply have to enter your name and the software will do the rest.
Once you’ve found these mentions, it’s time to investigate whether your brand has been portrayed in a positive or negative light. If you’re being mentioned as part of a complaint, for example, this is evidently negative press and you’ll want to try to have the offending content removed.
- Figure out which types of content people are sharing.
Data from Google Analytics can help you determine which pieces of content you’re putting out there offer most value to your visitors. The more a page is linked to off-site, the more people are connecting and engaging with that piece of content.
Understanding the data behind these backlinks helps when it comes to planning future content. For example, if you find that visitors are mainly linking to blog content related to a particular topic – let’s say:
Utilising SEO guides – You should concentrate on generating more content related to that topic if you intend to increase outreach.
People will naturally navigate towards certain content that intrigues them, it’s just up to you to follow the data and keep releasing relevant content to increase the number of people flowing to the site.
Utilising SEO Experts that Can Revolutionise Your Online Marketing Approach
Having discussed the above techniques in elevating the way you might see marketing your website, it’s only natural that you may have a few questions.
If you’re wondering about how to implement these strategies directly – and without all the understanding of technical jargon needed! – there’s a solution at hand. Acquisition Agency is a Colchester-based digital marketing agency. It has years of experience under their belt. And they know more than a thing or two about utilising SEO to market your website… Any website, for that matter. They’ve worked alongside industries of all forms, companies of all shapes and sizes. Each time they’ve met targets and achieved those deliverables that have been promised along the way.
