Don’t we all wish that one magical day we wake up & suddenly hundreds, maybe even thousands of new people have visited our business site without spending huge loads of money on advertising? Well, it’s time for you to wake up as this is never going to happen. You really have to put in a LOT of effort to attract new & genuine customers to your site every day. While Social Media Marketing (SMM) seems to be in trend & the go-to choice for many businesses they only provide a short term solution. Moreover you always face the risk of your account getting banned or users leaving negative comments on your posts which may hurt your image. Running Insta & Facebook Ads may seem fun in the start however they are very time consuming & keep getting more expensive as your account grows. Running an Google Ads or SMM strategy does get you instant leads however, they are paid & sometimes the cost of advertising exceeds the profit on the sales especially during holidays. So what can you do to generate great leads without digging a hole in your pocket? Well, the answer is SEO!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website more visible on Search Engine results. Having a good SEO strategy helps you to earn a higher ranking on leading search engines like Google & Firefox. Being in the top searches for Google improves your visibility allowing you to attract a huge number of new & authentic leads which generate more sales. By creating optimized & keyword-targeted content you can attract a large number of Organic Traffic to your website. Even though SEO is Free, building a great SEO strategy requires some time & research but it pays off in the long. 

Importance of SEO in 2021

After the Covid-19 pandemic SEO has never been more important as it’s in 2021 as a lot of people started turning to online shopping. Research shows that Google receives approximately 13 billion searches per day however, 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results. Thus it has become necessary to build an effective SEO strategy not just to increase your profits but rather to survive in the competition. Google searches were the highest in 2020 and the trend has followed 2021 as well & isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Here are some reasons why SEO is so important for the growth of any business:

• Builds trust & improves credibility
• Cheaper than paid ads
• Highly targeted & user-friendly
• Cost-effective & provides a great ROI
• Improves Visibility which increases overall Traffic
• Highly Sustainable & easy to track
• Provides an Effective & Long term marketing solution

Tips To Improve your SEO strategy

1. Create quality content that revolves around your Primary & Secondary Keywords.

Content is Key for the growth of any website. Creating good quality content not only improves your SEO but also provides a better user experience. Interactive content pleases the users however it is not Google-friendly. While creating user-friendly content is important it’s also necessary to target the right number & types of Keywords to make optimized for search engines. You have to research the perfect Primary & Secondary keywords relevant to your business & create content around them. 

Keywords are the heart of SEO and the best way to find keywords is through keyword research. Keyword research is a very important & extensive task as your whole content is going to be created around that. Multiple tools are available on the internet with free tools like Google keyword planner or paid tools like Ahrefs, Uber suggest etc that help you find relevant & intent-driven keywords for your website. 

Your content must have the right balance of Google-friendly & everyday language. It should flow naturally & not just be filled with keywords all over, you need to create content that is engaging, interactive & most importantly helps users solve their problems. Understanding what keywords are most suitable for your target audience & blending them appropriately in your content gives your SEO and customer relationship a huge boost. 

2. Update & Improve old content Regularly

Nobody likes to read old & outdated content but nobody hates it more than search engines. With the ever-changing Google algorithms, your content needs to stay up to date & relevant. While it’s very important to keep coming up with new content, you also have to regularly update old content as it might become irrelevant to the newer trends & topics.

The most effective way you can optimize your old content is by updating broken or outdated external links. This improves user experience & protects your site from being blacklisted for having too many broken links. As you plan out a long-term SEO strategy you often target newer keywords. Thus you can add these keywords to your existing content, this not only helps in driving more traffic to your website but also improves your SILO. As you create new content you can link them back to older relevant content which improves your Internal link structure allowing Google to index your pages faster & help your posts rank higher for relevant search queries 

3. Diversify & Improve your Backlink Portfolio

Well by now you know that Keywords are the heart of SEO however backlinks are the thing that makes this heart beat. You really can’t build a strong SEO strategy in today’s era without having quality backlinks to your site. Building a strong backlink portfolio helps you to build authority & allow you in reaching out to a number of pages & articles relevant to your website. However, you have to be very careful as to where you add these links as they have to make sense with the content. Adding quality backlinks makes your page easy to index boosting your Google rankings. Google page crawlers scan through your content for a given search query they also scan through these external links figuring out how relevant to the search query is. However, building backlinks is never easy as adding broken or outdated links can increase page loading speeds. Here are a few ways in which you can improve your backlink strategy:

• Make sure your content relevant & worth backlinking to
• Focus on quality over quantity
• Reach out & share your content with pages you really want to work with through Social Media & email
• Offer to write a Guest post

3. Focus on Google Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are the hottest part of SERPs in 2021 & are a very important addition to your SEO strategy. One might not be familiar with the word but you must’ve read hundreds if not thousands of snippets while browsing through the internet. Snippets are the little rectangular boxes of content that appear on top of the page for a relevant search query. Managing to get a featured snippet for a relevant search shows your SEO strategy is headed in the right direction.

Snippets attract a lot of attention as 80% of the readers spend most of their time looking at the top of every search page. Moreover, 19% of all SERPs have featured snippets & 7.3% of them have double snippets. However, you cannot decide what content is going to be shown in your featured snippet. Getting a featured snippet on Google is not easy, your content has to be perfectly optimized & target the right keywords. Here are a few ways to earn featured snippets:

• Target Long-tail Keywords: Longer Keywords are more intent-driven & specific increasing their chances of getting a featured snippet. A study conducted by SEMrush shows 55.5% of 10-word keywords resulted in a featured snippet as compared to the 4.3% of single-word keywords. 
• Ask Questions: People often surf the net for finding a solution to their questions. Using words like ‘What’ & ‘Can’ in your content increase the chances of getting a featured snippet.
• Use the right Format: featured snippets have 4 different types of formats i.e Paragraphs, Infographics, lists & videos. Making content around these formats improves your chances of getting a featured snippet.

5.Make sure to provide a great User Experience

Providing a great user experience is the biggest priority of any business. Having an easy to use & interactive website helps you to retain old users & attract newer ones as well. Therefore every SEO technique you use should focus on improving the overall user experience. While ranking your page, Google takes into account a number of factors like page loading speed, bounce rates, average time spent, etc. If you have a low click-through rate & users just spend less than a minute browsing your site, it significantly affects your SEO which automatically decreases your rankings. 

Hence delivering a great user experience is the key to achieving a higher ranking in 2021, here are a few factors to consider for providing a better user experience:

• Mobile Friendliness: 60% of all searches on Google are from mobile phones. Hence you need to focus on mobile SEO as well as make sure the website is optimized for both mobiles & desktops. 
• Page Speeds: As mentioned before nobody likes a site that is slow. Improving page load speeds improves your SEO & also gives users a quick response to their queries.
• Image Optimization: Images take up 21% of a website’s weight meaning they can slow down your site’s speed. The images you use must be of good quality, relevant to the topics & have alt tags. 
• Navigation: Finding other pages on your site must be an easy & quick task for users. Moreover, your site must also have a strong SILO with relevant internal links wherever possible. 

6. Conduct an extensive Audit to decrease page load times

The best part about SEO is that it allows you to track your website’s performance. Reporting & Analytics are the 2 most crucial elements of SEO that help you in improving the overall impact of your strategy. By conducting a detailed analysis you can understand what your audience is exactly looking for & create more content revolving around those topics. Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google search control, Yoast SEO, etc are some tools you can use for conducting your site’s Audit. There are a number of metrics that need to be covered to improve your site’s SEO score. Following are some common SEO metrics you must track:

1. Domain Authority/Rating: A domain rating score calculates the overall SEO score of a website. The score ranges from 0-100 and as the number increases, it becomes more difficult to improve the score (going from 20 to 21 is much easier than 80 to 81). A Domain rating/authority is not an official ranking method used by Google however it takes into account various other factors making it a very important Metric.
2. Page Speed & Core Web Vitals: Page load speeds play a very crucial role in SEO as they deliver a better user experience which increases your conversion rates. Along with page speeds, you must also focus on Core web Vitals introduced by Google in 2020. Their current set consists of the Largest contentful paint (LCP), First input delay (FID) & Cumulative layout shift (CLS) focused on improving user experience.
3. Organic Visibility: This metric focuses on calculating the amount of Organic traffic your website drives. SEO is meaningless if your website isn’t attracting any Organic traffic. It’s a key metric as it shows the quantity & quality of traffic you’re attracting showing whether your strategy is actually working or not. 

7.Learn & Master the EAT principle

EAT stands for Expertise, Authority & trustworthiness has been around since 2014 & become one of the most important elements of SEO. Despite the changing Google Algorithm, mastering the EAT principles help you earn a lot of success in Long term SEO. This principle allows you to measure the reputation of your brand online. Google aims to provide the best to their users, thus websites having great Expertise, authority & trustworthiness are ranked higher by Google. Thus EAT plays an important role in your website especially if your industry is highly competitive. If Google crawlers find a website with higher authority or expertise than yours it will rank them higher affecting your organic traffic & revenue. Even though having a poor EAT strategy dosen’t directly affect your business it slows your growth in the long run. Here are some ways through which you can improve your sites E-A-T:

1. Make sure customers leave positive reviews on famous sites like Yelp, Google My business, Amazon, etc.
2. Showcase Social proof on your site through case studies, testimonials, client reviews, etc.
3. Hire professionals to manage your content
4. Promote your business Onsite by creating an Interactive About Us or team page & Offsite through Social media, Listing websites, etc.
5. Get yourself registered on Public forums and stay updated with all the changes taking place in your industry.

Stay ahead of the Competition by following these simple tips

New content is created & published everyday which is read by billions worldwide. Creating the same old content using outdated techniques won’t help you stand out from others & increase your rankings. Well we cannot say that by just following these tips your SEO results will skyrocket however they will help you build a more effective strategy. SEO is an ever growing industry & you need to be the best to stay ahead of others in 2021. Creating content which not only satisfies the search engine but also solves the users problems is the way to go in 2021.

In the end you have to remember that you cannot master SEO overnight. You have to keep up with the latest trends & algorithm updates & adapt to them positively to gain a strong edge over your competition. 

Confused on how to get started with SEO? Let AdsCult help you out. Our team of SEO experts & content writers use a number of tools to improve factors like page speeds, meta tags, link building, etc which impact your rankings & create relevant & interactive content which keeps users hooked up to your website. So join the Cult & give your SEO a boost with Adscult.