How Does Search Engine Optimization Relate to Ranking on the Google Search Engine ?
You write great content about something you deem worthy and want to share it seen with your target audience. But, just because the content is "great" in itself does not guarantee a place high enough on the Google's search engine results page (SERP) so that your audience can see it. In order for your content to meet its intended audience, it should be backed up by either paid advertising (e.g., PPC) or organically optimized for search engines like the Google search engine to find it at right time by the right person. When the latter choice is made, this is referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Depending on whether you have some good advertising money available, you might be tempted to choose the easier option: PPC (Pay Per Click). But sometimes, you and your organization live on a tight budget, if any, but still aim at a fair shot when it comes to showing up when someone searches for the exact product or service that you offer as described in your "great" content. In this case, your gateway is simply SEO. Of course, joining forces between SEO and PPC is the ideal thing to do. But few of us have this luxury. We sometimes face a tradeoff between the two. This post is for those of you who somehow have to go for SEO at the expense of PPC.
Before diving right into SEO and its use, defining it might be a good start.
Just what is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is strategically organizing your content in a way that attracts your intended audience and meets their specific needs. This may sound simplistic as definition, but the emphasis on audience attraction and need satisfaction is key to writing effective content and constitutes the very essence of what SEO actually does.
How Does SEO Work?
People go online to search for information about their every need. The fact that they go to a search engine, like the Google search engine, and type in a query means that they are intentional to take certain action. If, by any chance, any term (keyword) in your content happens to match their search queries, it shows up to them through the help of sophisticated algorithms built in most, if not all, search engines. That's the basic mechanism of a search engine work. But you don't have to leave it all to chance; you can make use of SEO and make sure that everytime someone searches for the type of product or service that you offer, your content is the next thing they see. Here's how to do that:
• Anticipate Needs
• Perform Keyword Research
• Test Keywords
• Implement Keywords
• Iterate Keywords
Anticipate Needs
Anticipating the needs of your potential customers, by putting yourself in their shoes and imagining the "key" words they type in a search engine when looking for what offer, is crucial to an effective SEO strategy. So far, this is no magic; it is all common sense. What seems more of a hurdle, though, is how to come up with such keywords and optimize them for search engines algorithms to easily crawl, index, and return a relevant user outpout. The way to tackle this issue is through proper keyword research performance.
Perform Keyword Research
Now all words should be included in your content. You want the most effective ones only, don't you? (this will spare you from the troubles that "keyword stuffing" usually brings). As such, performing an effective keyword research and norrowing down on the most effective keywords is a sure way to determine and choose which keywords are to be used to optimize your content for user search queries. There are some powerful keyword research tools available out there. SEMrush is one of them with its Semrush Magic Tool. Entering a keyword into the SEMrush Magic Tool search bar, for example, gets you a list of keywords listed from most used to least used quantitatively. The most frequent ones represent what people are mostly searching for and therefore are the most competitive ones. And you don't want to face that stiff competition, but you don't want to spread yourself too thin either. So, you have to choose the keywords that are mid-range and long-tail (made up of multiple words) to weather out the competition. In other words, you need to find yourself a keyword niche and test it out before adoption.
Test Keywords
Once you find your keyword niche, you need to test it for suitability. Your keywords will need to suit the user need and intent and, hence, be placed in strategic positions in your content. Most importantly, you should test them yourself by performing relevant searches. If you tested a keyword for its likelihood of being typed by the typical customer searching for your product or service and found out that it shows up with enough frequency than others, you should retain it. Be aware, though, of extremely popular keywords for which competition is stiff. Instead, choose the less popular, long-tail keywords with less competition. This will be more cost-effective and increase the odds that your product or service ad is served when related to your potential customer's search term.
Implement Keywords
Now that you have tested your keywords (for mutual need suitability), you need to implement them in your content. But how do you do it? Well, this is where on-page SEO, the pluging of keywords in key parts of your content such as title tags, descriptions, and URL (Unique Resource Locator), comes in handy. If you run advertising campaigns, this strategy is particularly relevant. Furthermore, if you have a body in your content such as in a blog article or related content, you will want to include the most important keyword (s) in the first 100 words your article. This is believed to have a positive impact on the search engine results page by facilitating the work of search engine algorithms. By making use of one-page SEO, you exponentially increase your chances of showing up higher on the SERP, particularly on Google.
Iterate Keywords
Keywords implementation is not a one-off activity. People's needs evolve and so do their queries. On the other hand, your offerings might evolve as well. All of these changes require adaptation. Keyword iteration, the constant reviewing and adjusting of keywords with regards to user search intent and query, is key to showing up and staying on top of search results for what you offer.
Conclusion
Whether you have a budget to pay for ranking on search results or not, SEO should be your friend. SEO should be your best friend if all you have are words. Optimizating your use of those words is a must if you want to stand any chance of being shown to those who are looking for what you have and possibly pay for it at end of their journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment