Why Do you need SEO? (Search Engine Optimisation)
Your digital marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is indispensable for enhancing online visibility and driving organic traffic to websites. This comprehensive guide delves into the nuances of SEO, from decoding audience demographics to leveraging keywords effectively, and optimizing content structure to captivate both search engines and users.
The Golden Rule: Knowing Your Audience-Read this again and again and again!!!
Understanding your audience goes beyond surface-level demographics; it involves delving into their psychographics, behaviours, and preferences. Factors such as age, gender, location, interests, buying habits, and pain points play a pivotal role in crafting targeted content that resonates with your audience segments. When you have a clear understanding of your perfect client ask yourself, 'If they had £1000 in their pocket, what would they spend it on?'. If your answer is 'I don't know', you don't know your clients well enough yet!!
What Are Keywords?
Keywords are the building blocks of SEO, comprising single words or phrases that users input into search engines. Keywords form 4 main types and they can be categorized into the following:
Navigation Keywords: These are used when users are looking for a specific website or brand.
Search Intent Keywords: Reflect the intent behind a user's search query, such as informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial investigation.
Purchase Intent Keywords: Indicate that the user is ready to make a purchase, often including terms like "buy," "discount," or "free shipping."
Educational Keywords: Aimed at users seeking information or answers to specific questions, often starting with "how to," "what is," or "tips for."
Keywords can be categorised as follows for both ad campaigns and SEO functionality.
1. Broad Match: Targets a wide range of search queries related to the keyword. Example: Keyword "shoes" could match searches like "running shoes," "black shoes," or "best shoes."
2. Phrase Match: Matches search queries that include the keyword as part of a longer phrase. Example: Keyword phrase "running shoes" would match searches like "best running shoes for women" or "cheap running shoes."
3. Exact Match: Corresponds precisely to the search query without any additional words. Example: Keyword "running shoes" would only match searches specifically for "running shoes."
Additionally, negative keywords are terms that you specify to exclude from your campaigns, ensuring your ads are not triggered by irrelevant searches. For instance, if you're selling luxury watches, you might use "cheap" or "discount" as negative keywords to filter out users seeking budget-friendly options.
Finding the Best Keywords
While paid tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs offer comprehensive keyword research capabilities, several free alternatives can still provide valuable insights. Google Keyword Planner, Keyword Surfer, and Ubersuggest are popular choices for uncovering keyword trends, search volume, and competition levels, enabling you to identify high-potential keywords within your niche.
Optimise your Content Structure
Organise your content in your webpages so that search engines can scan your webpage easily. Utilise header structures into its hierarchical parts (H1, H2, H3 ect..). Doing this will help search engines gain a better understanding of the context of the page and rank the page faster.
Below is a simplified example off good page structure.
Writing a Compelling Meta Description:
Crafting a compelling meta description is crucial for enticing users to click through to your website. Here's an example with keywords:
Meta Description Example:
"Discover the best running shoes for women at XYZ Shoes. Our extensive collection combines style and performance, ensuring optimal comfort on every run. Shop now for exclusive deals and free shipping!!
The Impact of Internal and External Linking
Internal linking refers to linking to other pages within your website. While external linking involves linking to other relevant and authoritative websites outside of your domain. Both types of linking are important SEO factors and help search engines discover your Relevance, Authority and User Experience. All of these factors improve your ranking.
Leverage Multimedia Elements
Incorporating images, infographics, data visualisations into your content makes the user experience more engaging and appealing. This raised your webpages rank and improves traffic. Optimise any image or video to load quickly and use descriptive filenames and alt descriptions containing relevant keywords to vastly improve crawlability.
The Sugary Icing on the Cake-Make your Webpage Mobile Friendly
According to The Office of National Statistics 74% of website visitors first make contact with a website via a mobile device. Make sure your design for Fast Load Speeds, Intuitive Navigation and Compelling Content.
A message from Founder Leon Marfleet
I hope this article goes some way in helping those who are stuck with their SEO strategy and ability to attract meaningful traffic to their websites. If you want to chat about your SEO or feel you need a little help contact me for an informal chat.