In order for your business to be successful online, you have to have an SEO strategy. It is very important that your website and your marketing materials are targeted so that you can bring visitors to your site who will actually make a purchase. It helps to work with an SEO company, but even then, you have to know a little something about SEO yourself. It helps to start by understanding some of the key characteristics of SEO.
There is this gross misconception today that SEO is dead. The SEO landscape is rapidly changing but it is now more alive than ever. The SEO strategies you used in 2013 are not as effective today as they were back then. If your online presence is the driving force behind your sales and profits, it is imperative that you evolve with the times or get left out in the cold. Search engine giants like Google are hard at work making sure that websites with shady backlinks, shabby content and awful design never rise in their ranks. Forking over money for the services of the best SEO company is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Below are some of the strategies that your SEO agency should employ if you really want to see your site ranking well.
The Three Pillar Structure
No matter what strategy your team decides to employ, they have to make sure that links, quality content and social media are at the very center of it. It has become clearer than ever that these 3 elements are fully interconnected today if you are to achieve successful SEO. The content you produce must be extremely focused at your audience if you are to elicit a positive action. The social media creates a relationship with your audience proving to the search engines that people value what you have to offer. Getting links that are coming from other highly ranked sites shows that you can be trusted.
Mobile Optimization
Now that there are Hummingbird updates from Google, if your strategy does not include mobile optimization, then your chances of ranking well are slim to none. The site will need to have a responsive design and the content on it must also be targeted at mobile users. Even without considering the search engines, from a business point of view, it is for your own benefit to be reachable via mobile devices. Two in every three Americans has a smartphone while one of these three has a tablet as well. The responsive design means that your site looks good on a majority of the different types of smartphones and tablets. Optimizing your content on the other hand means that you adjust it to the types of behaviors your specific audience has on their mobile device.
Brand Building Over Link Building
A lot of entrepreneurs focus so much attention on building links back to their site and forget about their brand. If your links are leading back to an unknown source, they are not too effective at improving your rank. Today, thanks to Google Authorship, if content is known to be coming from an author who keeps putting out good content, their brand gets better results on search engines. This means that before you begin back-linking, it is important to get your branding strategy in place first. This way each and every link will have a more powerful effect than 100 lukewarm links.
These are just basic tips. You should look online for more detailed SEO concepts that are up to date for better understanding. When properly implemented, the above SEO strategies are sure to get your site ranking well in time.