Every second, 40,000 people search for something on Google. Is your business visible to those people?
As a SEO Expert from Melbourne with vast experience, I’ve seen many businesses who have sadly had negative experiences with Aussie SEO Experts.
As many business owners don’t have a technical, in-depth knowledge of how SEO works, it’s easy for agencies or SEO Experts to cut corners and use various “tricks” to fool Google into improving SEO- for the short term.
But gone are the days when businesses could “trick” Google into thinking a site is of a higher quality than it really is. These practices still exist but Google is becoming more and more attuned to businesses that do this, and quality content from trusted sites is becoming more and more important, instead.
As businesses become more astute in regards to SEO, the landscape is becoming increasingly diverse and competitive and the practice of SEO is continuing to grow, evolve and improve. It’s becoming more time-consuming to improve your SEO without the help of an SEO expert.
Every dollar you spend on SEO can yield significant results for your business, if you select the right SEO agency or provider. It is possible to see significant results that can drastically change your business’s visibility in search, when the correct strategy and tactics are applied (and with an experienced SEO Expert by your side).
Why you need an SEO Expert
There are 3.5 billion Google searches every day, and you want your business to show up in some of those searches.
The increasing prevalence of smartphones and tablets is making it even easier for people to conduct searches more frequently, and there are more searches being performed than ever before. And this will only continue to increase, meaning SEO will become more and more important every year.
While SEO is more important for ecommerce websites, don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s not relevant for your business. Even if you have a product that isn’t sold online, customers are doing more and more research on products online prior to purchasing. Your customers may even just be looking for directions or a phone number to find your bricks-and-mortar office or shopfront.
And it’s not enough just to have a website. In fact, there’s little point having a website if no one can see it, or worse; if they have a bad user experience on your site. Even the most basic websites need to be visible and have a good user experience, or this can undermine your entire business.
If your business isn’t visible in search with the correct information and a strong user experience on your website, I can guarantee, one of your competitors will be.
The 3 fundamentals of an effective SEO campaign
1. Website
Technical and on page SEO are fundamental components of effective SEO. If your site is not in optimal health, your other efforts in SEO may be wasted, or severely hindered. A positive user experience on your site is crucial, or users will click off straight away.
They’ll also very likely be left with a bad impression of your website and your business as a whole.
If you haven’t had an SEO audit in quite a while, and you’re using an Aussie SEO expert who isn’t looking to improve your technical and on page SEO, this could be a bad sign.
An initial SEO consultation should address site health, and ensure that your website is free from broken links, bad redirects and incorrect tagging, and ensure that it adheres to SEO best Practice.
A web page that is correctly optimised should be relevant and specifically related to a topic, with high quality, in-depth content. It should include the subject in title tags, the URLS, in the alt text for images and specify it several times throughout the content.
Your content should link back to a category page, and the homepage.
When it comes to the content itself, it should be easily linkable. If people cannot link to your content, search engines will be unlikely to rank it. This is often the case with gated content (content that requires a password to access) and other content that cannot be reproduced or shared.
Your website needs to be accessible, clear to read and technically sound, with a rich user experience.
2. Content
In the same token, it’s not enough to simply have a great, healthy website with all the correct technical and on page SEO elements.
You also need to have high quality content paired with a strategic content amplification strategy, so that users can spend time consuming your content and sharing it further.
Without quality content, there is not much to rank, and your website will be lost in search. All your other efforts in the other aspects of SEO will be wasted without it.
Some businesses create blogs with a whole bunch of keywords packed into the introduction, titles and throughout the entire blog post. An SEO expert would tell you that this is not the best way to achieve a strong SEO ranking. If the quality of your content is jeopardized by the need to jam in too many keywords, you’re missing the point.
Your content should be unique and should not be plagiarised. All links included within your content should reference high-quality and reputable sources.
One of the easiest ways to ensure your content gets shared is to provide high quality content that serves a need or a purpose. In-depth articles which tell users how to do something, or provide helpful, actionable advice are more likely to be shared than tried and tested topics that have been rehashed over and over again.
When considering your content, ask yourself, is your content:
- Interesting? Does it offer a unique point of view?
- Is it useful? Is there a wide audience base who need help with this issue?
- Unique? Has it been covered before multiple times? Do a quick Google search and find out.
Try to find gaps in terms of content which hasn’t been produced, or produced well. Don’t be too general. Sometimes the best content is that which targets a niche group of people, or a unique issue. These topics might be easier to rank for, as they are not as competitive.
To find out what people are searching, it’s helpful to conduct keyword research in a topic area prior to writing content to find out what people are searching for, what keywords they are using, or to find out if there’s a need for a niche topic area that other experts may not have covered.
If they don’t already create content for you, your SEO expert will be able to provide this information for you, so you can discover which topics or themes will be likely to yield you the best results.
Social validation can solidify the success of your site. Quality content that fulfils a need with your searcher will ensure they spend more time on your site, and ensure that they share your content, which, in turn, shows Google that your content and site is of a higher quality. Google will then see these actions as social validation and in turn, will use this to rank your links.
3. Outreach
While content is a crucial part of creating a great user experience, it’s important for users to be able to actually see that content.
This is where outreach comes in.
Outreach is the process of getting other sites to link back to your site using your helpful content, therefore building credibility and improving your organic search ranking.
In the past, SEO “Experts” could employ bad tactics, such as building sites with questionable authority to link back to websites in an attempt to increase a site’s authority. However, practices such as these undermine any good work you have already done to build up your site, and Google is constantly evolving its algorithms to cut out the success of these practices.
Gone are also the days of randomly reaching out to bloggers or sites to promote your content.
These days, a systematic, well considered approach is necessary to ensure the continued success of your content.
Your SEO expert can help formulate an ongoing outreach strategy, which can include the following tactics:
- Guest posting
- Email outreach
- Online PR outreach
- Blogger/influencer outreach
- Social Media outreach
The idea is that others will link back to your content in a way that adds value to their audience, which will give you quality traffic back to your website and will give you quality backlinks from reputable sources.
But how do you go about approaching this kind of outreach?
Email or PR outreach simply involves emailing people directly and asking them to link back to their audience. This works well when you can specifically detail how your content will be useful to their audience. You’ll need to properly research who they are, and, ideally, offer them something in return. Maybe it’s simply the promise of an ongoing relationship, or feedback you can offer them on their website, products or services. It could be data or other resources they can use.
When reaching out to bloggers and influencers, your content will have to be very valuable and specific to their audience. Many bloggers these days will not agree to any promotions without payment, unless it will be of value to them in the present or future. When considering which bloggers to approach, consider how many followers they have and what their online presence is like. If you’re not getting anywhere, it might be best to try to approach low-tier influencers and bloggers to begin with. As with your content, niche bloggers and influencers may be more relevant for your audience anyway, and your content will perform better in turn.
If you’re not getting any responses to your outreach, your offer may not be tempting enough, your emails may not be compelling, or you may not be emailing relevant sites. Your content itself may not be valuable enough, and worthy of sharing. If you’re lucky, you might get feedback or a response from the people you email, but many people may not respond at all.
It’s crucial to reach out widely to a relevant audience in a meaningful way. This can be time consuming, but, if done well, can produce great results.
This is why a well-considered, multi-pronged approach for outreach is crucial. But, as mentioned, this all starts with quality content, which is at the heart of good SEO.
SEO is a crucial part of your wider digital marketing strategy, and should be working in tandem with all aspects of your digital marketing efforts. One business’ strategy may be vastly different to another’s. To get your FREE personalised digital marketing strategy, or to find out more about how we can create a SEO strategy for you, get in touch with one of our SEO experts and contact us today.