There is no silver bullet to tackling everything you need to know about (Search Engine Optimization) SEO because everything about it is dynamic. That is both liberating and damning at the same time. It is liberating because no party can “hack” the system and push everyone else aside and damning because you have to be on your toes all the time to make the most out of it.
Remember, the immense traffic potential from search engines makes it one of the most critical marketing channels you can invest in. The rewards make up for the hard work and resources you put into it.
Why are SEO Principles Important to Your Marketing Goals?
There are several reasons why following a set of fundamental SEO principles is important to your marketing goals. Here are the vital ones:
- SEO is a solid marketing technique: It has been working for the past few years and it will continue to be relevant in the future. It is arguably the most reliable marketing tool today. For the sake of improving your turnover, you cannot afford to ignore this potent strategy.
- Your competitors are doing it: If you are not motivated enough to do this, remember your competitors are actively working on their SEO strategies. If you do not rise to the occasion, you risk being left behind.
- It is cost-effective: The ROI is quite significant in business. Whatever resources you dedicate to SEO, you are guaranteed tangible benefits of equal or exceeding value.
There are many other benefits to developing some SEO principles but we cannot cover all of them. More importantly, there are no downsides to this that we can write home about. With that out of the way, it’s fruitful to understand some of the underlying principles driving the workings of search engines to tame the seemingly tumultuous and unpredictable field of SEO. We cannot cover everything but let’s have a crack at some of them:
Develop an SEO Strategy
SEO is a very diverse field because there are different ways in which you can work on improving your rankings. It helps to have a sound SEO strategy on which you will base your marketing goals and actions. You need to find a solution that yields the best results for you while making it easy and even enjoyable. If you can’t decide what your strategy will be, you can always hire experts who will chart the path for you. You can outsource to Los Angeles SEO Company or similar firms, and they will handle everything including analytics and continuous monitoring.
High-Quality Content
At one stage, before Search Engines evolved into what they are today, all they cared about was keywords. Therefore, some smart people worked out that the content didn’t necessarily have to be THAT good (enjoyable, informative, or just plain readable) and started spraying keywords everywhere to great success.
However, things have changed: Now, you should strive to impress the people – subscribers, prospective customers, casual readers – not the bots. Do not neglect the technical aspects like keywords and such but they should be second to the people on your priority list. Make your content informative, engaging, exciting, and original, and both the people and the bots will love your website.
Local SEO
Most of the businesses with an online presence are local – this means that the majority of their clients come from their localities. Few firms on the internet are genuinely national and international.
Surprisingly, most firms work hard to rank well nationally while overlooking the fact that they get most of their revenue from local clients. This is where Local Search Engine Optimization factors in. It enables businesses to work towards visibility to the people who matter; the locals.
Mobile Optimization
Since the majority of the traffic on the web nowadays is driven by hand-held devices, it makes sense that optimizing for them is becoming a priority. Google is undoubtedly aware of this and has been leading the charge with its mobile-first index.
With this tool, they reward sites optimized for mobile with better rankings and actually punish websites that would do very well on a desktop with poorer rankings if they ignore mobile. Any sound SEO strategy should recognize this and act accordingly. Whether you optimize for mobile, build a parallel mobile-friendly version of your website, or make your site mobile-friendly exclusively first then work towards being desktop-friendly, you have to pay attention to this.
Backlink Building
Backlinks are so pivotal in the way search engines rank content on the SERPs. There are two sides to backlinks:
- Acquiring quality backlinks
- Dissociating from poor quality backlinks
Once you have good structure and quality content, your attention should be shifted to obtaining good backlinks to authoritative players in your industry. When you nail the quality and the structure, site managers will want to be associated with you; therefore, you should work on that first.
Disavow spammy or ethically questionable backlinks to maintain your good reputation. Google, for instance, penalizes spamming with a hit on your rankings. At the same time, being associated with websites known for pornographic content, terrorist activity, and propaganda won’t help your course either.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric that predicts how your domain or subdomain will rank on SERPs. It ranges from 0 to 100 whereby the higher the score, the better your chances of ranking higher on the search engines.
When your website has a good number of high-quality external links, it will rank better than one that doesn’t or that has low-quality links. It’s important to remember that it is all about the quality rather than quantity. High-quality links come from sites that are industry leaders in the area you are targeting. For example, your financial website being linked to Forbes is going to be impactful in a very positive way.
It helps to think of SEO as a journey without a fixed destination; the rewards are in the small victories along the way. If you become the top ranking site for a specific search term or phrase and rest on your laurels, someone else will come in and knock you off your perch. Understand these fundamentals (including those not covered here), and you will have very productive fun with SEO.
