Benefits Of Utilizing SEO Best Practices For Your Business
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website content to increase its visibility when users search for topics related to your business. The more visibility you have in search engines, the higher your pages will rank, and you’ll be more likely to attract the audience you want.
On a typical search, the first result will receive 40-60% of the total traffic for that query. The second and third results, on the other hand, receive significantly less traffic. If you still aren’t convinced of the impact of SEO, know that 98% of searchers do not click beyond the first page of results.
The good news is that you can take steps to help your business rank highly on search engines. All you need to do is learn the basics of SEO. These are some of the ways your business will reap the benefits:
- SEO increases organic discovery and website traffic
- Use of a long-term marketing strategy that tends to yield high ROI
- SEO can help create a high-ranking website that provides 24/7 promotion
- Better web experience for your visitors and higher user engagement rates
- SEO improves credibility and trust in your business
- Stronger PPC campaigns (pay-per-click campaigns)
- Higher rankings in local searches and appearing in front of right community
Best Practice SEO Techniques To Help Your Business Rank
Before you started your business, you had to become an expert in your field. Similarly, before you can see the benefits of a strong SEO strategy, you need to understand how search engines work. Google is by far the most popular search engine, but there are a few other options on the market like Bing and Yahoo.
Search engines use an algorithm to rank the most relevant results for the user’s search query. The results chosen for the user’s search appear on the SERP, or the search engine results page. If you are ready to dive into the world of SEO strategy, you can start with the following techniques:
- Keyword research
This is often the best starting point for your SEO journey. Keyword research is the process of researching popular search terms that your potential website visitors will type into search engines. Understanding what keywords your potential visitors will be searching for will help you weave them into your content and rank higher in the future.
- Link building
In the world of SEO, a “backlink” refers to when a website links to a page on an external website. These links are some of the most important factors that Google and other major search engines use to determine your ranking. More high-quality backlinks on your website will lead to a higher ranking for your pages.
- On-page optimization
On-page optimization refers to the tactics that can be implemented within the website to improve its ranking. It is within these pages that you would put the power of your keywords and your backlinks to good use. You can also make an effort to update the title tag of the page with relevant search terms, use the alt attribute to caption the images, and update the meta tags.
If you feel intimidated by the idea of implementing these techniques, there are plenty of tools and resources to help. Some of the most popular SEO tools on the market include:
Scorpion also has a cutting-edge tool called Scorpion Ranking that is designed to help local businesses rank faster and more reliably than ever before.
Best Forms Of Content Marketing For SEO Tactics
Now that you have a good idea of the benefits of content marketing, you might be ready to get a little more hands-on with your SEO efforts. There are many different types of pages that make up your website, and all the SEO techniques you learned above can be applied to them. There are so many types of pages that make up your website, and your website is just the beginning of your digital marketing strategy:
- Service and product pages
The goal of your service and product pages is to communicate the nature of your business and the reason your website visitors should choose you to meet their needs. In addition to helping your business rank on search engines, services and product pages are your chance to help your clients and potential clients understand the value you offer.
Below, you can see an example of a service page from Scorpion client Arnold & Itkin LLP. The catchy headline sets the stage for what future clients can expect from the firm, specifics and a way for the visitor to schedule a consultation.
- Blog posts
Although blogging consistently takes a lot of time and effort, if SEO is one of your top priorities, it is well worth it. It makes sense when you think about why people use search engines and what a good blog can accomplish. Before your next customer even knows they need your business, they will know that they have a question.
If you are a law firm, for example, that question could be somewhere along the lines of, “Are traffic violations civil or criminal matters?” If you are a home services company, the question might look more like, “What is the best way to paint kitchen cabinets?” By framing blog posts around these questions, not only will you appear in search results, but you will also position yourself as an answer to your future clients’ questions. This makes it more likely that they will contact you in the future.
If Google determines that your blog post would make a strong and succinct answer to a user’s search query, the system might choose your content for a featured snippet or rich snippet. A rich snippet is an enhanced organic search result, while a featured snippet is an answer to a query. The featured snippet appears above the organic search results in position zero, which is the first Google search that appears above organic SEO listings.
Below is an example of a blog from Scorpion’s content marketing team that Google featured as a rich snippet. This is great news for the client, Todd Miner Law, because when your content is featured, it greatly increases the likelihood that users will click on your site. This increases traffic to your website, which encourages Google to prioritize your content even more. Plus, the more visitors your website gets, the more likely you are to generate leads, which is the ultimate goal of your SEO efforts.
- Videos
If you have been paying attention to social media trends, you have likely noticed that video popularity has exploded in recent years. Marketing professionals have been taking advantage of this, and for good reason. Half of social media users prefer video over other types of content. Videos allow you to immediately gain the attention of your audience and provide them with the information they need quickly.
Video content will help increase your SEO by simply drawing more attention to your website and your other content. In order for the videos to bring up your ranking, not only do the videos need to be high quality, but it is also important to add relevant keywords to your titles and descriptions. You can also include a transcript of your video on the same page, which will give more information to the search engines to help them prioritize your content.
Check out this video that the Scorpion marketing team made for legal client Patituce & Associates LLC. This is a simple example of a way to introduce your team to your current and potential clients. Not only does a “meet the team” page allow your audience to put faces to your name, but it is one of the many ways you can use video to kickstart your content marketing and SEO efforts. Some other forms of video that can get your SEO efforts off the ground include:
Social media and YouTube videos
Video advertisements or sales videos (traditional commercials)
Client testimonial video
FAQ video
- Landing pages
A landing page is a standalone web page that you create specifically for an individual marketing or advertising campaign. As the name implies, it is where your audience “lands” when they click on a link in an email or an advertisement. While web pages can serve a variety of purposes, landing pages typically have a single focus or a goal, which is called the call-to-action (CTA for short).
With the best SEO practices, you can design landing pages in a way that will attract the right audience. In order to create a landing page that is engaging and SEO-friendly, you can implement these tactics:
Use relevant keywords to guide the content
Structure the page in a simple and straightforward manner
Monitor page speeds
Build backlinks that link to other key pages of your website
Social media posts
There are many platforms that your business can use to expand your digital presence, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Although social media posts do not impact your SEO ranking in a direct way, they can draw more traffic to your website and other content. Google and other search engines will take note of this exposure and use it to prioritize your business’s content.
In addition, if your social media engagement is higher than usual, it will lead to more backlinks and more SERP real estate. When we talk about SERP real estate, we are talking about the listings that you see when you type a query into a search engine.
- Contact pages
The contact page is a sort of “final destination” for your website visitors. A contact page should include the name, location, email address, and other information that your future clients need in order to contact you. The contact page should be pretty simple and straightforward, but it can make the difference between a user contacting you and moving on to another business.
Even though a contact page is short, you can use it to boost your SEO, don’t overlook small details. Plus, if your web design is SEO-friendly, it will allow your users to directly click on the contact page from the search engine. Below is an example from Scorpion client Owen, Patterson and Owen:
Now that you have a good understanding of the basics of SEO, let the marketing team at Scorpion take your content to the next level. We have the technology and the services you need to establish credibility for your business like you’ve never seen before. Contact us to get started.
