Simple in theory, SEO campaigns are actually one of the most complex facets of digital marketing and can be brutal if they go wrong – not to mention pricey if paid advertising is involved. As a marketer, you’ll likely have been part of SEO campaigns that didn’t go as well as hoped. Whilst this is natural due to a part of marketing being trial and error, there is an element to SEO that is calculated and precise. If you analyse your data correctly and have a good understanding of market trends and your business scope, you stand every chance of running a successful SEO campaign but sometimes you just need that little extra help from experts, like Paul Hoda.
That being said, marketing is constantly changing, making it hard to stay on top of trends and to know where to take your campaign next. A lot of marketers get too complacent with what they thought they knew, and recycle the same ideas expecting them to work every time – inevitably, they don’t. This is why a lot of SEO campaigns fail. If you want your business to be at the top, you need to nail your SEO, but how do you do that?
In this article, we’re going to share some top tips from the award-winning digital marketing experts at The Brains on how you can make sure your SEO campaigns are a success every time.
1. Find the right balance between high and low search volume
When coming up with an SEO strategy, keywords will be at the top of your agenda and will, for the most part, be the driving force behind everything else you do. You should know your business sector well enough to know what prospective clients are likely to be searching, so some keywords will come naturally to you, but there’s a good chance these are high volume keywords. This means thousands of people will be searching for them, and equally as many competitors will be trying to target them. As a result, it can be notoriously difficult to rank for these, but lucrative when you do.
In contrast, you have low volume keywords. Not as many people search for them, but this makes them easier to rank for, and there’s every chance you can gain a conversion from someone searching for a low volume keyword due to the specificness of it.
Ideally, a successful SEO campaign will be a fine balance of high and low search volume keywords to aid traffic to your site and get you more page one or top three position rankings.
2. Carefully consider keyword placement
You’ll know that Google is very picky with keywords in copy. Have too few and you won’t rank, but include too many and you’ll be penalised for keyword stuffing. It’s a fine line to walk, but keyword placement can play a big role in how or if you rank. As a general rule of thumb, try and include your target keyword in the following places:
• Page or article title
• Meta title and description
• Page URL
• Heading or subheading
Having keywords in these places will make it easier for Google when it’s crawling your page or post, but make sure not to stuff!
3. Think about your link strategy
As part of your SEO campaign, you need to make sure that your website is easy to navigate and that it is deemed authoritative. If it’s not, people will bounce off and search engines won’t find it easy to scan. Both of these can be detrimental to your rankings and overall reputation, so it’s important you factor links into your strategy. There are two types of links: internal and external.
Internal links link back to a page on your website. For example, in a blog post, if you mention a service you provide, link the keyword to the service page you have. At the end of a post, write a call to action (e.g. contact us) and link to the contact page. This will build authority for pages on your website and make it easier for users to move around your website.
External links are links to your website from other websites. A good example is Wikipedia pages – most of them have external links to reference sources. That’s an external link, and these are good for your SEO campaign because they mean you have more opportunities to be found by search engines, and you’re exposed to a larger audience which can boost traffic to your website.
A good linking strategy will help you rank, so it’s important to pay attention to the links you’re including and where your website is being linked from. If you’re pitching to websites to get an external link, make sure they have a good domain authority and aren’t spammy, otherwise your website could be impacted negatively as a result.
A marketing agency like The Brains can help you navigate an effective link strategy, but also give you expert guidance and advice on building SEO campaigns that will deliver fantastic ROI.