The majority of you already know about Google Search Console and its impact on your SEO efforts. But, what about mobile-first-index and semantic search?

Two months down to 2018, you must know what worked the last year? What created a huge setback? Now, the question is, what must be changed in your SEO strategies to increase organic traffic, leads, profits and, indeed, value?

It’s a good time to reshape your inbound marketing strategies for increased organic visibility.

Why?

Consumer habits keep on changing… drastically. It’s the driving force behind inbound SEO marketing. Over the past few years, the corporate world experienced an enormous shift in the consumer behavior; primarily when it comes about eCommerce business.

What you need to do, now?

Make SEO a top priority for ultimate survival and outrival in the business world.

The long-desired goal of search engine optimization is to rise to the top of SERPs (search engine ranking pages). However, search engines function on an evolving philosophy. With the recent updates in Google’s algorithms, search engine optimization as a cornerstone of inbound marketing has considerably changed.

Carefully observe your SEO marketing data because search is getting challenging for all types of B2C and B2B businesses.

What do the marketers say?

According to a HubSpot study (state of inbound, 2017), “63% of marketers say their biggest challenge is to generate organic traffic and leads, and 61% states that increasing organic visibility is their top priority”. However, they do not continue with it. The best route to decipher whether marketing professionals fully embrace the strategically planned search engine optimization campaign is website auditing.

Here are few things to notice in case your website ranking is slowing down or faced a sudden drop.

The web page URLs are faulty or too long.

The web page titles lack the keyword focus.

Outdated web design and poor site architecture.

Call-to-action buttons either absent or placed wrongly.

There is an unnecessary duplication of home page URLs.

The web page titles are just imitating the content headers.

Improper content organization and poor internal linking.

Break the old habits.

Remember, evaluating and planning an SEO strategy isn’t a one-time exercise. Numerous factors are involved when it comes to driving organic traffic and amplified conversion rates, from useful call-to-action buttons to targeted outreach.

We all live in a digital environment. Virtually, every single business understands that unshakable user experience is a prime driver for customer conversion. But, growing and converting the target consumer-base while securing enough budget remains a top concern for the eCommerce businesses.

Let’s bring on top-performing SEO strategy for your website’s enhanced visibility online.

SEO is based on three major categories:

Architecture

Content

Links

Focus on all of them, or else your website will be nowhere on the internet sooner or later. Do not overlook any one of them; it will leave a negative impact on your online visibility. Eventually, it will put the effects of your organic at risk – resulting in fewer clicks, decreased page views, leads and sales, and, of course, the declined conversions.

Here are a few essential practices, more of a framework, to improve your SEO strategy – leading to increased visibility in the SERPs and keeping the potential customers on the site longer, pushing them into the sales funnel and, ultimately, convert.

1. Improve the Web Design and Structure:

First of all, ensure that your website design and overall architecture grounds on the latest trends – following the Google’s guidelines.

For example, your web design should be unique, clean and pleasant. Don’t go after a generic template, instead build a customized layout with a compelling value proposition to reinforce your brand worth.

Remember, customers always look for ease and clarity. The majority of them don’t appreciate the jargons and unnecessary use of superlative words.

Try to be as specific as you can while designing your website. Usually, people do not believe in big claims but give a considerable edge to personalized messages. Give it a thought.

2. Add Life to your Content and Target Long-Tail Keywords:

The next significant thing is content. For improved SERPs position, your website needs the fresh blood in the form of new, high quality and relevant content.

Every time you enter new content on your website, say in the form of blog posts, the web crawlers visit those pages and index them. In this way, the search engines keep analyzing your site and recalculating how it should be ranked in the SERPs. Every time you add fresh content or repurpose the old posts by adding new scripts coupled with long-tail keywords, the chances for your target audience to find you on the internet increases.

The web crawlers feed on regularly published content. But, to be honest, it is not enough to boost your website’s ranking. Why? If you continually post attention-grabbing content, but it’s not formatted as required by the Google Search Console, it will not make any impact on the deadly web crawlers.

Remember, if your target keywords are void of long-tail phrases, it can be hard for you to rank your site higher in Google search. Also, you cannot bring into play the voice search to its full potential. For the reason that people, verbally, use lengthy sentences compared to what they enter into the search engine bars. Hence, first, you need to make your website voice-search-friendly and then target the right keywords for improved results.

3. Never, I Reiterate, ‘Never’ Undermine the Power of Links:

Links, inbound or outbound, still matter a lot. These links are one the oldest factors in search engine optimization, but still considered as the ‘votes’ from the third-party websites that your site should be placed higher in the SERPs.

Getting inbound links won’t break your bank, but it is the most time-consuming aspect of SEO. The businesses who seek for their link-building kickstart the campaign by grabbing the low hanging fruits, including;

Business Directories.

Local Publications.

Classified Ads.

Yellow Page Listings.

Social Media Bookmarking.

With these methods, you can build a dozen of links in the minimum time span. However, for high quality and long-lasting links you should have to dig deep into the inbound marketing strategies such as guest blogging and paid campaigns. If you are unsure about what works in this regard, consider consulting an SEO company that will direct you to the right path to bag the desired results.

Verdict:

From first interaction to happy consumers and beyond, you must fuel your SEO with an above-mentioned 3 point checklist to outrank your competitors. From your site architecture to content and link building, your search engine optimization plan needs a new overhauling for increased organic traffic – leading to an improved position in SERPs and hence, the accelerated ROI.

Search Engine Optimization is a very crucial part of digital marketing. Here are some Search Engine Facts which a digital marketer must know. These SEO Facts 2018 can really help them to plan for different marketing strategy.

1. Most of the users click on top 5 search results:- According to the latest researches, 75% of the users click on the first 5 search results shown by the search engine. To be more precise, 32% users click on the topmost result compared to 18% users going for the second result. This stat very clearly shows that the higher your website will rank, the more visits it will get.

2. Users don’t usually scroll past page 1:- Only a mere 20% of the users are persistent enough to scroll to page 2 of search results. So if your website is on page 2 then you must work on your digital marketing and SEO strategies.

3. Mobile Friendly Keywords are the need of the hour:- Around 50% of users start their searches on a mobile device. When people use their phone for a search, they tend to use different keywords. Also, when it comes to looking for local business, 88%of the searches are initiated on a mobile device.

4. Mobile SEO and Local Business:- As we mentioned before, users tend to search for local business on their smartphones. The number of smartphone users is increasing year after year, hence, it is very important to plan your keywords according to the rise in mobile searches.

5. Websites with more pages are likely to attract more traffic:- The number of pages on a website plays a direct role in determining the amounts of traffic it generates. It simply reflects the importance of relevant keywords.

6. Around half of the search queries are 4 words or longer:- It is a clear fact that short keywords will help you to show up higher in the search results. But at the same time, it is very difficult to ranks those keywords as short keywords are very competitive. So, instead of going for short competitive keywords, you should just use longer ones effectively.

7. Organic Search still trumps over Social Media Traffic:- Although social media traffic is increasing day by day, organic searches are still the way to go. Organic searches account for 41% of the total search which is 3 times the social media traffic. Hence, moving completely to social media platforms to generate traffic is not wise.

8. Quality Content:- Google adores rich and definite substance which gives per users esteem and answers questions. Whenever you’re attempting to get a site on the first page of Google, ensure you incorporate a lot of substance.

Search Engine Optimization has become one of the most complicated aspects of having an online presence.

The variables that are key to earning your rank constantly update and change and there are many things that can go wrong.

Moreover, SEO for service-based businesses have goals that are not necessarily going to be achieved through strategies built for other types of businesses. In this article we’re going to look at 3 pitfalls you should avoid when marketing your service-based business online.

Your business’s online presence will only help you if it’s aligned with guidelines and expectations laid out by Google and any website you use to help rank your website.

Make sure you’ve got these all covered!

1. Google My Business

We previously reviewed the Google My Business service to let you know that you need to claim your business, mark its location on Google Maps, and fill everything out. If you haven’t done this yet or even if you have and just want to review it, it’s important to get it done right.

Make sure you have the exact right location. Inputting any location incorrectly will not only mislead users but Google will eventually find out. You’ll get caught either through a user complaint or their own algorithm and you’ll lose your listing placement in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) if not the listing entirely.

Also make sure you’ve got the right business type category filled in. This is an often-missed element some businesses don’t even touch. Make sure you’ve got your category, address, and every other element filled in properly and have great photos.

Google presents this info to users to help them find the right business so misleading the user in any way with the wrong information will severely impact your online marketing and website ranking efforts.

2. Don’t Overdo It

You have your keywords (if you don’t please review this post) and you want Google to know you want to rank for them. That’s great and it’s definitely essential to have those keywords on your website in the copy and the various meta tags.

Too much though will raise a flag with Google. SEO has a big problem with fraud. There are too many fraudulent agencies all over the world who define themselves by their ability to abuse Google and falsify ranking signals.

One technique that unfortunately did work years ago was keyword stuffing. That was a long time ago though and now Google can see clearly when someone is overstating their relevance.

Use the keywords but only enough to state it. Once you have made the point with your page that it’s about that subject, start looking at semantic variations. The copy should flow well and be easily readable, so write your copy first and then edit it for SEO terms.

It’s a good idea to limit the term to 3 – 5 instances depending on the length of the page. For service-based businesses who deal locally this definitely applies to your location serviced.

Don’t overdo it or Google will think you’re being dishonest.

3. Be consistent

Your NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) needs to be the same on all listings. If you have several locations, make unique listings for each when adding your business to websites like yp.com, superpages.com, and Yelp.

If you only have the one location, then you just have to be very careful that each location listing has identical contact information. Scrutinize this heavily because some websites may display elements slightly differently and some fields can get filled in wrong.

Review these so you’re not sending mixed signals to Google and to users.

Don’t panic if you’re guilty of any of these pitfalls. They’re easy problems to fix and once you have them right, you’ll be in much better shape to earn higher placement in Google. They’ll also help your users by providing the right information, and in a way that doesn’t seem like you’re misleading them in any way.

If you’ve got all these done right and you’re working on earning rank but finding there is just too much to do or you can’t figure it all out, then please let us know. Our SEO professionals will review your entire online presence, goals, and use those to develop a strategy that works to earn your website rank for the terms you want it to rank for.

Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.