SEO is an ever evolving marketing strategy. In order to stay savvy and stay ahead of competitor, marketers and businesses have to keep abreast of all the changes in the industry. As sales performance has prove, the SEO process is one of the most potent acts a company can perform to get a greater return on its investment.
People who are typing topics in a search engine are already motivated about your kind of product because they are actively searching for it. Here are some tips to make sure they find you and not your competitors.
Create Great Content
The necessity of creating compelling content can never be under emphasized. Supporters and potential buyers are often inundated with content that has been regurgitated over and over again across similar sites. In fact, the Internet itself is a vast web of communications that are repeated ad nauseum. Your goal against your competitors is to keep your content fresh and new.
In general, people want to be informed, entertained or inspired by content. It is best to cast a wide net by choosing a strategy that dedicates some time to accomplishing all of these feats. Even if you can lure a target customer to your site by giving them information that is useful and meaningful, you should plan to vary their experience on your site.
Give them a downloadable product, blog posts, articles, videos and opportunities for interactive feedback. This increases the likelihood of a conversion while they are on your site.
It is important to remember that great content is also a big influence on search engines. They are crawling the web to find your last updates and to see how many external backlinks have been created to your content. The way to keep rising in results is to deliver high quality articles at consistent release times.
Stay on Top of SEO Changes
The Google search engine has launch some very interesting changes for search in the last year. The one that threw many people off is the fact that you can no longer find out which keywords a user typed to get to your content.
The Google PageRank updated recently in December 2013. The way publishers optimize content has drastically changed. So be sure you keep up with changes will ensure you are far next your competitors.
Pay Attention to Competitors’ Backlink
You are likely programmed to monitor other sites who link back to your content. This has the advantage of helping you see who supports you, but it also helps you monitor any negative feedback about you on the Internet.
Monitoring competitors’ backlinks can give you an idea of who supports them, and provide leads on potential linking partners for you. Do not approach anyone with anything negative about your competition. Simply present what is positive about you.
Create a Targeted Keyword Strategy
The best strategy for keywords is to choose those that give you the highest traffic. This will require you to carefully choose keywords as you are creating content and use analytics to determine which ones are best for you and which ones are dominated by your competitors.
It is important to rise in search engine rankings, but it is more important that the keywords you use are relevant to you, your products and your business.
Eavesdrop on Your Competitors
No self-respecting business wants to admit that it constantly monitors competitors’ activities, but it is the only way to know what they are doing and how their customer base is responding.
Visit their sites to see what SEO tricks they are using and which ones are getting the results you would like for your site. You can also determine whether they are missing out on reaching some markets that they have not addressed. Be sure to only use what works for you.
Competitors’ businesses are similar to yours, not identical. Following them down every rabbit hole of SEO may not take you where you need to go.