If you read one article about SEO this year, make it this one!

The Internet is magic… and your blog, social media, ads, website and a range of other factors have a special kind of power to attract the right clients to you and to lead them through your sales funnel successfully!

However, behind the scenes, it’s not magic at all. It’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), of course! This is a carefully crafted web that functions almost like a roadmap that you use to guide your users to where you want them to go.

And if you read one article about SEO this year, you should definitely make it this one. We’ve compiled everything you need to know about SEO into one punchy, powerful article. So read on and be amazed what you’ll learn!

SEO fundamentals

SEO, you sneaky little…

Folks, we’re not going to lie. SEO is tricky. You need to understand and be up to speed on emerging trends, changing algorithms, the latest technology, and how your clients behave and what they want. It’s a lot!

And many businesses completely avoid SEO because it seems like such a huge task that requires expert knowledge – and it does – but you can always use the baby building blocks until you can:

• Upskill yourself with the latest SEO course which will teach you the ins and outs you need to watch out for, or
• Afford to pay the experts to build your SEO.

The SEO buzzword is…

Optimisation! The goal of SEO is to rank higher in relevant searches, and there are a few fundamental ways to do this including optimising your website by having appropriate and relevant content (that has appropriate keywords inserted in this) and establishing your authority through brand mentions, high-quality content and inbound links.

You can also look at optimising general things on your website such as the page loading speed, changing page titles and meta descriptions to include some of your target keywords and having clean code.

And then, of course, content marketing. Although you can treat this as a separate digital marketing strategy, it is also an important element of SEO. Develop high-quality, original content over time, and you will reap the rewards by building a loyal, recurring client base.

When surveyed, marketers across the world say that they are focusing heavily on content marketing and this makes up a substantial part of their budget. This is because it provides a better return on investment (ROI) than other forms of digital marketing. Think about it: in a content marketing piece you can expand on the benefits of a product and/or service more than you can in a limited-space advertisement.

In addition, content marketing – especially creating blogs on your website – is much cheaper than having to pay for advertising space in a third party publication, having to pay the designer to put together an eye-catching advertisement and still having to fork out money for a copywriter to generate the copy.

Why does SEO matter?

• Search leads have an 8,5 times higher chance of conversion than outbound leads.
• SEO creates a great experience for your clients.
• Ultimately, SEO generates leads and revenue.

Quick SEO tips

1. Always use hyphens in your URLs.
2. Use the right keywords in your images. Search engines will pick up on these ALT tags and will rank your images in addition to your text. This makes it incredibly important for SEO purposes.
3. Stick with a domain name. If possible, make sure that this name has the keywords that you want to be ranking for.
4. Focus on and create content for long-tail search phrases, not only keywords. As these are more unique, they are easier to rank for as there isn’t much competition.
5. Create an awesome website and content. If you have a quality presence on the web, and Google sees that your content is helpful to users, they will automatically rank your website higher.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to learn more about SEO? The Digital School of Marketing’s SEO and Web Analytics Course is just the qualification for you! After completing this course, you will be an SEO master. If you are ready to learn this fundamental part of digital marketing and propel yourself in the fastest-growing career of the century, then this course is just for you! For more information about this and our other online digital marketing courses, please visit our website.