How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy

You’ve probably heard this a million times, but let me remind you again. Content is the new currency. It’s what gives that extra push to the top online brands worldwide. And this is where search engine optimization or SEO comes in to increase the digital footprints of your brand. 

Do you want organic website traffic and a higher Google ranking for your digital brand? All you need to do is enhance your website visibility on the search engine results page. And better SEO strategies help you to achieve just that. 

But before we dive into those, let’s start with the basics. To build a good-quality content website, you need to research and learn about your target audience. 

• What are their goals and queries? 

• Which sites do they visit most often? 

• Top products and channels they’re interested in

• Areas of interest and expertise

Google Analytics and search engine results pages can tell you a lot about the above consumer preferences. Monitoring on social media can also make you aware of your content’s engagement rate, your competitors, and other relevant topics. In this way, social listening helps you to prepare the base for your content strategy.

Now that we have covered the basics, let us explore some of the targeted SEO strategies for 2023. These will help create more brand awareness and build trustworthy relationships with customers in the field. 

If you’re looking for the best search engine optimization strategies for 2023, you’re at the right place. In this blog, we’re telling you the best ways to create user-friendly content in 2023. 

Where are all the SEO-friendly keywords hiding?

Reddit is your warehouse of trendy keywords

Firstly, track the words appearing under a topic’s subreddits. These are the most searched words on the internet. To find the specific keywords, follow these steps.

1. Go on Reddit and search for your topic. For example, your topic is “intermittent fasting.” Just type it in, and you’ll get the results.

2. Scroll through the threads and subreddits and look for the words that appear the most. These keywords will help you to create more engaging content.

Here’s how you can get free and paid keyword generators to help you

Secondly, you can use the free keyword generator websites available online such as WordStream and Semrush. You can seek inspiration from your competitors’ websites.

1. Google the content topic and copy the links from the most visible, highest-ranking websites.

2. Paste those links on the free keyword generator and click search. You’ll get all the high-volume keywords you need.

Google ad descriptions give you a sense of the most-clicked on keywords

Thirdly, you can pick your relevant and longer keywords from the Google ads that pop up when you search the given topic. Now you need to choose one primary keyword and other supportive keywords that will align with your content’s purpose and reflect your brand’s personality.

What are the content strategies to increase your website’s “Dwell Time” (and reduce the “bounce” rate)?

Keep your content original and concise to optimize search engine results

Seo-friendly content is usually catered to the most frequent Google searches regarding that topic. Research says your audience only engages with 28% of your content. Therefore, to keep them engaged your content should be precise, practical, comprehensive, and high-quality. 

Your content needs an effective and convincing introduction. It should reflect the tone and purpose of your whole content. Keep it short. It’s not your college essay.

You should discuss relevant points in depth and give your audience easy access to websites containing more information. Keep your sentences short and use a conversational tone. The use of subheadings, questions, bullet points, and brief paragraphs makes your content more SEO-friendly.

Your content should not be there just to attract random user traffic. It should actually give people the solutions that they need. There are different content planning tools available online to guide you. You have to enter keywords and click on the relevant industry to find what’s best for your page.

Pro Tip: Do not beat around the bush. Cut to the chase, give people what they want.

When stated clearly, the author’s intent matters a lot!

First off, your details as the author of your content should be mentioned clearly in a nutshell. Your experience and areas of expertise matters a great deal when it comes to attracting an industry-specific demographic. There should be another link for a page where all of your content is arranged at one place and users can easily access information.

All these can boost your content’s readability factor by 57%. Once you start satisfying your target audience’s needs, your site’s “Dwell Time” will certainly go up. COnsequently, your website ranking will also go up on the results page.

Let’s make that click-through rate (CTR) go higher

In digital marketing, click-through rates or CTR measures the number of times an user clicks on your website link. Google defines click-through rate as “the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown.”

Increasing your click-through rate does not guarantee you a higher website ranking but it surely increases the visibility of your website. CTR mainly depends upon your industry and the quality of keywords you are using.

Google uses RankBrain to see the number of people clicking on your website. What if people shy away from clicking on your website? Your website drops down to the bottom of the search engine results page. Therefore, you should publish content that puts people first.

The following are some SEO strategies that can improve your click-through rate.

Make sure to create an engaging and effective SEO title

You should start with framing exciting and appealing titles. Besides, create meaningful and useful tags. You can check out Google’s Adwords ad descriptions for inspo. These ads use words that help in maximizing clicks and therefore, result in keyword optimization. 

Also, don’t forget to include numbers in your titles for maximum SEO optimization.

Harness the power of convincing meta descriptions

Your meta descriptions (also known as meta description attribute or tag) should be catchy and compelling for better SEO marketing. It is the snippet of text that appears right beneath the SEO title on the search engine results page. Usually, Google shows meta descriptions of 155 to 160 characters.

Have you run out of meta description ideas? Now, you can also get help from free meta description generator tools on the internet.

In any case, these bite-sized texts should summarize your whole content within a few words. They help the search engines as well as the users understand the purpose and quality of your webpage. Even if your website ranking stays the same, the click-through rate will improve. 

Don’t let your URLs go unnoticed!

Search engines use your title tag, link anchor text, the site’s URL and the main content. SEO-friendly URLs are generally concise, well-structured, and rich in keywords. This results in better navigation on the search engine results page. Therefore, include your primary keyword in the URL.

Shorter and simpler URL links also lead to more reposts on Twitter, shares, and likes on Facebook. If people get an idea of what they’re getting into from the URL itself, they are more likely to stay longer on the main content page. 

Update and renovate your old posts to attract higher website traffic

Most of the time, we have a backlog of old posts that are just lying around without attracting much traffic. Do not let them gather dust! Even if you have forgotten about them, your users are still frequenting those posts. But they are not getting the updated information they are looking for. 

Instead of blindly churning out new content, you should go back to your old trusted companion (read content). By simply updating your content, you are giving your audience what they want. Hence, your targeted audience will find you more reliable and your website traffic will pick up. You can also get more backlinks if you are one of the first among your competitors to update your blog. 

While choosing among your older posts, you should try to find the pages containing high-quality links and encountering the highest traffic. Your next priority should be the pages with the most keyword impressions, even if they attract low website traffic. You can use Google Search Console to pick out the URLs with the most impressions. 

Here’s an important tip you should keep in mind. Do not update the blogs that will not improve your SEO marketing. How to figure it out? Use Semrush for carrying out content audits and see for yourself which post attracts how much traffic. 

Moreover, you must update your meta descriptions and add more relevant keywords. Answering the visitors’ questions may also increase the click-through rate of your content. You can also update your post with new research and statistics that came out. New links for updated information can be added as well. 

How to enhance your website loading speed to keep the traffic inflow steady

Set your loading speed to maximum three minutes

According to Google, the loading speed of your content website is a key indicator of user experience for mobile and desktop searches. Hence, you can’t afford for your website to keep buffering and send people away (“bounce” rate). The goal is to make your site more mobile-friendly.

Your content should load within less than three minutes to be on the top of the search engine results page. You can also measure your website performance by using Google Lighthouse and Cloudflare Observatory.

Pro Tip: Please avoid using useless pop-ups. Annoying your audience is never a good thing!

How fix the loading problems and win the obstacle course

There are a lot of problems that hinder your content loading speed. Some of them are JavaScript issues, heavy images, caching problems, unnecessary plug-ins, code density, and so on. We can take the following steps to solve these issues.

• You can compress and optimize your images. 

• Minimizing plug-ins and disabling unused ones can fix your loading speed. 

• Browser caching can also help you to overcome caching issues.

• Asynchronous loading can help you load multiple files simultaneously and eliminate JavaScript issues. 

• You can also minify your JavaScript and HTML code for search engine optimization.

Image optimization is the key to maintain user attention

We often ignore the power of images. Image optimization can prove to be a huge difference since a lot of us are visual learners and thinkers. Any type of multimedia content provides an interactive and colorful way to engage with content. 

First thing to remember is that you need to keep a featured image that will guarantee you higher social shares across Twitter and Facebook. As a matter of fact, posts including images can guarantee 94% more views on social media.

Your images must be high-resolution and should reflect the content of your page. Appropriate keywords should be used in the titles and captions of the images. The graphics should also be compressed in size if you want your site to load faster. There is no use in giving obscure or crowded images. 

Also, you should use alt text (also known and alt tags or alt descriptions) for boosting search engine results. Moreover, a visually impaired reader or users who are not able to load the image, can also benefit from alt descriptions. 

In case of getting images from third-party sources, you need to beware of copyright issues when using them. Original and unique photos always perform better than overused stock photos. You can also use sites like Canva to design your own graphics and layouts. This will eventually lead to more website visibility.

Infographics can also be used to retain user attention and cater to their exact needs. According to research conducted by BuzzSumo, infographics can create 2.3 times more social shares than basic how-to posts.

How do internal links improve your website ranking?

Internal links are one of the best SEO strategies to improve your website ranking on the search results page. Search engines find the sites faster which are linked to some other page on the web. They can easily understand the information you have linked and provide it to your readers. 

Internal links are those which carry the user from one page of your website to another related one. For example, if you run a tourism website, you can link other pages containing info about train and plane ticket booking. The links within your main content are called contextual links. It is better to use a linking strategy that allows readers to access different parts of your website.

Google also uses these links to rank your website. You should not forget to remove the spammy or non-existent pages in these links. Hence, you should make sure to avoid linking errors which will have a bad impact on your page. 

Your website needs to earn high-quality SEO backlinks to win the battle of optimization

As per Google, backlinks help you improve your website ranking, user traffic, and credibility score. These are also known as inbound or external links. An instrument of digital marketing technique, backlinks lead readers from higher ranking, reputed third-party websites to your websites. This is why it is crucial yet difficult to earn your backlinks from authoritative sources.

The better the third-party source performs, the higher referral traffic your website gets. 

1. Your goal is to earn more and more backlinks from high ranking websites in the same industry. 
2. If you promote the backlinks from low-quality, malicious websites, the Google algorithm can punish you for engaging in illegal digital marketing. 
3. You should not get backlinks from spammy, non-indexed websites. 
4. Try to avoid sponsored backlinks.

To check the credibility of your third-party website, you can use Semrush’s Backlink Analysis Tool. Analyzing your competitor’s backlink sources and marketing strategies can also help you develop better SEO strategies.

Local SEO takes you one step closer to the top. Let’s learn how.

With the increase of mobile searches in the age of smartphones, local SEO is becoming one of the most crucial tools of engaging with your customers. For instance, nowadays, 60% of searches are done from a smartphone or tablet. Basically, local SEO makes sure your local business pops up in local search results on any search engine. 

For example, if you own a local bakery business, you have to make sure the search engines are up to date with your business information. This will ensure that the search engine results page finds your business information and delivers it to your targeted customers. We have already talked about the importance of author bios and related information on your website.

To optimize your local search results, you need to create and verify a page for your business on Google My Business and Google Maps. You will attract more traffic both digitally and physically. You can also link your pages to your social media accounts to increase visibility. 

Spend a little to gain a lot!

Search engine marketing or SEM can be improved through paid advertising efforts such as Google Adwords ads, native ads, Twitter and Facebook ads, Google shopping ads, and so on. Thus, you can use paid and targeted digital campaigns to enhance website visibilty. 

You can even pay for getting backlinks from trusted and high-ranking websites. According to Google, buying backlinks is “a normal part of the economy of the web”. Therefore, if possible, you can set aside a budget for link building. But before you move on, do not forget to check Google Search Essentials. 

FAQs

What do you mean by SEO?

The full form of SEO is Search Engine Optimization. It is a digital marketing technique used by companies to increase their website ranking and visibility on the search engine results page. This improves their content outreach to the targeted crowd. The more visible your content gets, the more organic traffic it attracts.

What’s the deal with SEO and SEM?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, whereas SEM stands for search engine marketing. Both are part of digital marketing. While SEO gives your website organic traffic, SEM generates paid organic website traffic. In this latter case, your website is marketed through paid advertisements by bidding on keywords. 

What is the Google RankBrain algorithm and how to crack it?

RankBrain is one of Google’s many search engine algorithms. It is a machine-learning artificial intelligence system used by Google to rank its search results. It is supposedly a part of Google’s Hummingbird search algorithm.

How long do you have to wait for your website to appear on the search engine results page?

When you search for your website on Google and it comes up somewhere on the results page, your website is indexed. If your website is new, you have to wait for some time to get a higher ranking. If your site is not yet indexed, check again if you have submitted your site to Google. You can request for indexing on Google Search Console.

What lies ahead in the future of SEO strategies?

As technology keeps developing, creating SEO-friendly content is a constant and ever changing battle. With the emerging popularity of voice search, long-tail keywords have become of utmost importance. Creating a responsive website is also important. 

Furthermore, you should never duplicate or plagiarize your content from any website. Make sure to create unique content for your targeted audience. From your headings and subheadings to your image descriptions and questions, everything should be distinctive and suitable to your brand persona. 

As search engines keep on improving their website ranking algorithms, we must stay ahead in our SEO game. We already have Google’s new artificial intelligence algorithm BARD entering the content scene. Even if we can get faster and cheaper content generated by artificial intelligence, we still need to check it for errors like plagiarism.

Artificial intelligence cannot work without human input. No matter how progressive we get with machine learning, ultimately it is you that steers the wheel of the content creation process.

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