4 Steps for a Traffic-Driving SEO Strategy

This month, we wanted to focus on educating our audience on search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a valuable tool for businesses, small and large alike, to increase their website traffic, target the right customers, and convert their content into sales and new business. Although a powerful weapon in your digital armory, SEO can get very complex very quickly. This is why we wanted to break things down by simplifying it into a few key definitions and tips for success. We hope you enjoy our beginner’s guide to SEO and learn from the tools listed below.

SEO Definitions and Acronyms Worth Memorizing

SEO talk can be a bit overwhelming. Whether you’re performing tasks internally or outsourcing them to an SEO agency, it’s important to know your stuff. Here’s a quick glossary/cheat sheet for the most important SEO terms you’ll want to keep tucked in your back pocket.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of optimizing a website to increase its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): The webpages that appear in response to a query in a search engine. 

 Keywords: Words or phrases that are used to describe a website and its content in order to help search engines understand and rank it accordingly. 

Backlinks: Links from other websites that point to a particular website. 

Meta Tags: HTML tags that provide search engines with information about a web page, such as its title, description, and keywords. 

Alt Text: Text that is used to describe an image on a web page so that it can be indexed by search engines. 

Crawlability: The ability of search engines to find and index a website’s content. 

Content Optimization: The practice of optimizing content for search engine visibility. 

Organic Traffic: Traffic that comes to a website through unpaid search engine results. 

Analytics: Data that is used to track and measure website performance.

Now that we’ve got the basics out of the way, let’s talk about a few important SEO tips for beginners who are just starting on the journey of optimizing their websites.

1. Create Content Constantly
   Your website should be updated with relevant content as frequently as possible. Come up with a game plan depending on your industry and the nature of your business. Our recommendation is to set a goal to update some form of content on the site at least once a month, then slowly increase your efforts over time. Content can include anything from landing pages, blog posts, a portfolio, and more.
2. Focus on Keywords and Relevancy
   Peforming even just short bits of keyword research prior to writing a blog post can be extremely helpful for improving SEO. Focusing on creating keyword rich content and providing information on your site that is relevant to your industry will keep you in good standing within the search engines. It’s okay to venture off outside of your niche every now and then, but keeping things consistent helps not only your optimization but your overall brand as well.
3. Don’t Ignore the Backend
   We understand that the technical side of your website may be intimidating, but it’s important not to completely ignore it! The backend of your site plays a major role in how your website performs. Site speed, mobile usability, and updating plugins are just a few (among many more) elements to the technical SEO of a website.
4. Monitor Analytics
   Be sure to monitor your site’s performance with tools such as Google Analytics. Paying close attention to metrics like bounce rate, number of visitors, and top traffic sources is a great way to set goals for improving your site’s SEO and establishing a good starting point for content direction.

Ultimately, SEO doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. Start small with auditing your website to identify the major pain points. Then, work to make quick fixes on the technical side while building out your content library of keyword-rich blog posts and page additions.

Still think SEO is a little too much to take on at your organization right now? Contact us today for more information on how BRK Global Marketing can become your SEO team, so you can focus on other important elements to your business. Let us help you improve your rankings, enrich your content, and establish leads that convert! Contact us today.