Life hackers, philosophers and motivational speakers will tell you that life is as simple or as complex as you make it out to be. Pithy advice? Probably. But also quite telling when you’re wading through a mountain of information and can’t quite make out the difference between myriad complex tools and strategies and seemingly simple tactics.
The subject of SEO optimisation and how it relates to inbound marketing appears a complex issue. Some say SEO is long dead, and that you should look to other tools and methods of driving traffic and building your lead generation. Others point to the fact that search engines are grabbing more market share, with a study by Dimensional Research showing that about 90% of potential leads are now doing online research before making a purchase.
Simply put, SEO still works – especially if you tap into the techniques to optimise it for your business. SEO optimisation is one of the most effective means of boosting your brand and online presence, and of driving traffic to your site. It’s also more cost-effective than, say, PPC advertising or purchasing leads for email marketing. That’s why investing time and effort in organic SEO and having a dedicated SEO strategy is integral to inbound marketing success.
You don’t need to be particularly tech savvy to pull this off, either. Here’s how to hack your way to SEO optimisation:
1. Get back to basics
Start by optimising your website with the basic SEO elements that belong on your homepage and all its main pages – from a clean, crisp design in complementary colours to appropriate headlines, keywords, tags and meta descriptions.
The keywords searched by a user show up in both the title tag and the meta description in bold font in Google search results, so make sure both contain your business name and keywords for greater visibility.
Title tags are the page titles Google reads, and that’s what you see in search results as headings. It’s the text placed between the <HEAD> </HEAD> tags near the top of the HTML code for the page, and should be 60 characters or less and include your business or brand name and keywords that relate to that specific page only.
The Meta description appears below the title in search results. This further defines your page, and should contain less than 160 characters. As an example, GCL’s homepage reads: "GCL Direct are an expert B2B marketing services provider specialising in Pan-EMEA. Data, Insight and Dialogue services with over 25 years of experience". These are easy to add in with SEO website plugin tools (see point 3).
2. Highlight your content
It goes without saying that your website should be appealing in terms of aesthetics and user experience, and that your content should be on target. You can also bring the two together to optimise your searchability by creating striking copy with appropriate tags and highlighted text. Header tags (the headings in the body of your copy) help to break the content into sections that also lets search engines know more about what each section is about. If you use images, use strong, related keywords for both the image name and the alt tag. Pull quotes and bolded text – used sparingly – get your reader’s attention and help search engines to distinguish other important information and keywords on the page in question.
3.Tech it up a notch with the right tools
Stay on track with the technicalities of how well your site is functioning with webmaster tools and plugins like Google Webmaster, which can provide information on the general health of your site as well as update you on any crawl errors it may find. It’s fairly easy to familiarise yourself with all the technical elements the tools provide, and this will help boost your on-site optimisation too.
If you’re using WordPress, you can get free plugins such as All in One SEO, Platinum SEO and SEO by Yoast; they’ll allow you to easily add title tags and meta descriptions to your pages. Premium plugins such as Scribe SEO will also give you SEO suggestions. Then keep track of your results with tools like Google Analytics that will provide you with information like visitor volume and visitor behavioural information. These tools will also allow you to monitor your organic search traffic sources to see what keywords people are using to find your website in search results and help you draw up an effective SEO strategy.
4. Link it up
Build both internal and external links to boost your visibility. Link building is about getting related businesses to link their websites to yours. But you can also build quality links with embedded links in sharable content, or by submitting guest blog posts to popular industry blogs in order to link back to your website via an author box. In addition, interlinks from content on one page to another within your own site gives search engines more information on your content, and visitors more reason to stay and browse further. Avoid using indefinite text like “click here” and use anchor text when linking to other posts. This blog, for example, uses internal links to other relevant pages related to the blog.
5. Grow with Google
With 50% of mobile searches now focused on finding local results and 61% of those searches resulting in purchases (according to Search Engine Watch), signing up with Google My Business, Google Maps and Google+ seems like a no-brainer, especially as Google likes to give results close to the searcher. So up your business profile by creating local search profiles where possible, submit your website to applicable industry directories, and get credit for your content with Google by setting up Google Authorship.
6. Craft your Content
Content is key to growing both your website traffic and search ranking and should form the core of your SEO optimisation strategy. The key to pleasing both is quality content, especially the kind that will be highlighted and shared. This can extend from blog posts, tutorials and ‘How To’ guides to include all digital media such as infographics, videos and podcasts. According to a report by Marketing Land, videos comprise 62% of all Google searches globally and Google is paying attention to blended results: videos get 50 times better organic page ranks than plain static text results.
7. Spread the word
If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating content, take some effort to get it out there. Social feeds on Facebook and Twitter are now being indexed by Google. So it’s worth your while to have highly visible share buttons on your site and to pay attention to the headlines, keywords and text you use when sharing to social media.
A foolproof SEO strategy forms the foundation of an effective inbound marketing strategy. To learn more about using inbound marketing to generate and close leads, download our free guide, here.
