Firstly, let’s break down SEO as I think businesses and marketers have a tendency to overcomplicate it, which results in an overwhelming feeling of “this isn’t for us” or “we don’t have the expertise/time for this.” Actually, SEO is quite simple when you dispel the SEO myths and break it down to its core fundamentals: on-site (changes you make to your actual website) and offsite (things you do outside of your own website).On-site SEO is simply the process of making your website search-engine friendly. In my opinion, the most important component of SEO is on-site SEO.These are things that you can control, and on-site SEO factors quite literally tell Google what your website is about so that they know where to rank it in its search results.As for off-site SEO, it should always be secondary to nailing your on-site SEO.You have control of what’s on your website, so it’s much easier to focus on getting this right first, evaluating the results, and then look into whether off-site SEO is something you should thinkabout doing.When it comes to improving your on-site SEO, the best place to start is by optimizing your content for both users and search engines.
Content is important for a few reasons.First, if you don’t have great content, then you have nothing to share on social media, via email marketing, on your website, in ads or on affiliate sites to grow your marketing funnel.These are all core components of digital marketing and are the primary reasons you should be investing in creating content.It benefits your business on so many levels;it’s not just for SEO.But most importantly, creating great content is actually what causes other websites to link to you. Consequently, this improves your off-site SEO metrics because people are more likely to link to your content as a useful resource or reference it as point of discussion.So focusing on great content kills two birds with one stone: it improves your on-site SEO and your off-site SEO.
Here’s one example.I wear glasses.If you’re an online glasses retailer, you most likely create content around new trends or top styles.For example, you might have a blog post titled: “10 Best Glasses Frames for Oval Faces.”Now,this may work for attracting people like me to your website,because I’m already aware of my problem (that I’m short sighted), and I’m considering myoptionsfor solving that problem (I’m thinking about purchasing the solution).However, the largest opportunity for most businesses to scale their traffic and database is to use content to also attract people that don’t know they need your product yet.
This gives the target buyer the option to solve the problem for themselves, without directly trying to sell to them too early.And in the event that walking, turning the brightness down, and looking in the distance doesn’t work, they may very well get an eye test and then buy some glasses from you after remembering how helpful your content was.Now this is an exaggerated and accelerated example of someone moving through the three stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness (ofproblem), consideration (of options) and decision (on which product/service to use).However, the point is, when you create content that helps people and is great quality, they’re much more likely to share it on social media, link to it from their personal blog and tell their colleagues about it.If you can pair that with thorough keyword research and a solid on-site SEO strategy, then you have a much better chance of ranking well in Google’ search results.So, while SEO is an important part of digital marketing for attracting traffic at the top of the funnel, it’s by no means the most important — SEO works best when you implement it as part of a wider content-led marketing strategy.
Source:Entrepreneur
Peter Zmijewski is the founder and CEO at KeywordSpy.His expert knowledge on Internet Marketing practices and techniques has earned him the title “Internet Marketing Guru“ He is also an innovator, investor and entrepreneur widely recognized by the top players in the industry.