Even so, your small company needs to incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO), from an agency like Peaks Digital Marketing, moving forward to develop your niche, pull more customers, and rank higher in organic searches. We’ll explain the core of SEO practices, how they work, and why they’re crucial to your business’s development, both in the short and long term.

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, abbreviated SEO, is a set of practices and techniques designed to get your website ranked higher in search engine results when searchers type in a keyword related to your niche.

Now, you shouldn’t think that SEO is only for computer experts, although there’s a fair amount of backdoor work that can improve SEO; instead, it’s a systematic approach to content production and web design to engage readers, provide authoritative data, and drive sales.

Essentially, the more helpful your content is to readers, as determined by dwell time, crawl indexing, authoritativeness, backlinks, and other metrics, the more prominently your webpage will be displayed when a user searches for a keyword in your niche.

How Does SEO Help My Business?

Improving Placement

One of the most obvious benefits of SEO is implicit in its primary purpose: getting you to the top of the search engine results page. Searchers rarely go past the first page of Google, and they are highly likely to select the first, second, or third option on the list compared to links provided further down. Google determines who gets to be the top dog through a series of bot-indexed evaluations. The closer you are to the top, the more likely you will draw visitors to your site. And, of course, visitors mean potential customers. If you’re using your website to drive sales, then it’s a little surprise that more web traffic translates to more revenue.

This positive feedback loop continues, too; more positive interactions with your site lend more credibility, which, in turn, bolsters your reputation in the eyes of the search engine.

Brand Awareness

One benefit of SEO marketing strategies is that they can really help you stand out in your niche. If you’re passionate about something that you want to share with the world, then you can quickly learn, through SEO research and marketing, what works and what doesn’t.

In other words, if your brand continues to rank at the top of the list in your niche, you can convert curious information-seekers on your niche topic to customers.

Of course, being on the top page of search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing builds trust and brand awareness.

When customers click on your top-rated website and see the wonderfully relevant and insightful information you provide, they are much more likely to trust you and recognize your brand.

Improving Customer Experience

One crucial aspect of SEO is web design. Google’s AI very much appreciates websites that are designed with user-friendliness in mind due to higher page views and a lower bounce rate. Surprisingly, customers also appreciate a well-thought-out website layout.

SEO uses in-depth marketing tools to deliver a fresh, user-friendly website that customers will appreciate, potentially leading to further sales.

Providing Helpful, Relevant Data

As a small business owner, you probably have lots of information and experience to share with the world in your niche. Once you decide where in the market you want to settle down, SEO can help you digitalize that information for a growing audience. Whether it’s through a blog on your website or via helpful how-to articles, the internet is a great place to share your knowledge.

Distilling your experience into a bite-sized format is helpful for readers who want to learn more about your products and share the same interests that you do. For example, growing an audience through a blog is also a great way to build your business in the long run.

Adapting to Market Change

The key marker of a business that will thrive is the ability to adapt to change. SEO can be part of your rapid force adjustment if you need to shift your market approach, product line, or media.

SEO can provide you with helpful analytics about which products consumers prefer, which topics are of the most interest to your viewers, and what your competition is doing that you aren’t. All of these factors can help you pivot when you need to and adapt to changes in the market that would otherwise lead to business stagnation.

Growing a Business

The flexibility to make changes, the opportunity to appear before a larger audience, and the ability to improve the customer experience—all of these SEO features have one commonality: progress. At its heart, SEO is about growing your business by increasing your exposure, building your brand, and equipping you with the right resources to improve your products.

SEO is a long-term strategy that can drive revenue with very little input. Most importantly, it generates a continuous stream of organic traffic. This traffic not only helps you gain more sales in the short term, but it can also build a base of repeat customers, who may then help spread your business by word of mouth.

The Bottom Line

Search Engine Optimization is essential for any business with an online presence and often serves as the distinguishing factor between enterprises competing for the same niche.

If you’re looking to rank higher in organic search results, generate more organic traffic, and grow your business in the long run by building a consumer base and providing helpful, relevant content, then it’s important to incorporate SEO strategies into your business model. Whether you’ve just started your business or are in an explosive growth phase, SEO is a necessity that can help your business tremendously.

Wondering how to do SEO but not sure where to start? You’ve come to the right place. Search engine optimization (SEO) can drive quality traffic to your website and grow your business — and this guide will walk you through how to do SEO the right way to grow your business.

How to do SEO: A beginner’s guide

Let’s get started!

What is SEO, and why does it matter?

SEO is the process of optimizing your web pages to organically increase your website’s visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) or search engine listings.

The primary goal of search engine optimization is to get organic traffic — the traffic that comes when a visitor or searcher clicks on a search result from your site.

With about 90% of the overall search market, Google is currently the largest search engine. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t optimize for other search engines, such as Yahoo, Bing, Apple and Baidu.

Why does SEO matter?

Billions of Google users search for information, products or services online every day. In fact, Google processes about 99,000 search queries per second. As a result, search engines are the biggest potential traffic sources for websites.

Generally, the higher your website ranks in search results, the more visitors it will get.

We’ll explore how to make this happen, with the help of target keywords and other specific SEO tactics, later in this article.

Still not sure if learning how to do SEO is worth your effort? Check out these facts:

• Search engine traffic comprises a significant chunk of trackable traffic to a website.
• Seventy-five percent of searchers only choose a result from the first page of SERPs.
• Top results on SERPs have a click-through rate (CTR) of 28.5 percent.
• Strong SEO practices lead to a positive user experience. In fact, Google introduced the Page Experience algorithm update in 2021 that aims at providing its users with an optimal experience.
• Effective SEO means a higher return on investment (ROI).

Convinced that it’s worthwhile to work towards improving SEO on your website to drive organic search traffic to your business? Great. Let’s keep going.

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SEO glossary

Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re speaking the same language. SEO involves a lot of industry jargon that’s helpful to understand when optimizing your site for search engines like Google. Below are important terms to remember:

1. Keywords: Words or phrases people type or say to search engines when searching for something.
2. Long-tail keywords: Keywords or phrases with lower search volumes.
3. Keyword difficulty: This keyword research metric helps determine how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword. It’s a great way to determine whether it’s worth investing in that keyword or phrase.
4. Keyword relevance: How important is a specific keyword or phrase to a web page? Search engines use relevancy to determine what your content is about and when deciding what pages to rank for a specific search query.
5. Search volume: Refers to the number of search queries for a specific search phrase in Google within a stated time frame.
6. Backlinks: Links from a website’s page to another website. The links should be from a relevant and high-quality page to be effective.
7. Search query: A keyword combination or phrase users enter into search engines to find what they are looking for.
8. SERPs: An acronym for Search Engine Results Pages and refers to pages that search engines provide when a user performs a search query.
9. Indexing: The search engine’s process of organizing information before a search for faster responses to queries.
10. Ranking factor: Refers to the criteria that search engines apply to evaluate web pages when compiling their search results rankings.
11. On-page SEO: The process of optimizing web pages to achieve better rankings and earn organic traffic. It involves publishing high-quality, relevant content and optimizing headlines, images and HTML tags (meta, title, and header).
12. Off-page SEO: Refers to actions taken away from your website that impact your rankings in SERPs.
13. Googlebot: This refers to Google’s web crawler and involves a desktop and a mobile crawler
14. Search algorithm: A collection of formulas that search engines use to determine the quality and relevance of a web page to a search query.
15. Sitemap: A list of website pages within a domain or a file that provides information about pages, videos, and how different files within your site relate.
16. White hat SEO: SEO practices approved by search engines like Google.
17. Black hat SEO: SEO practices that go against search engine guidelines, including tactics like keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc., to attain a higher ranking in search results.

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Search engine basics

There is no SEO without search engines. Let’s get familiar with the ins and outs of search engines, especially how they work to provide personalized results to users.

Search engines are web-based tools that enable users to search for information on the internet. In other words, these are complex programs that identify information in the vast internet

database that matches a user’s search terms. Google is currently the most popular search engine.

Search engines have two primary parts that help them achieve their goals: search index and search algorithms.

Google provides its users with two types of search results: organic and paid. The latter option is one of the ways search engines make money. Ideally, the advertiser pays anytime a user clicks on a paid search result (aka PPC). More on that later …

How Google builds its index

Each search engine has its unique way of building a search index. For the sake of this article, let’s look at the breakdown of Google’s process.

URLs

Google’s process of building a search index starts with identifying URLs. A URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator, is the internet address people use to access a web page. Here are some common ways Google achieves this:

• From sitemaps: Sitemaps help Google understand the important files on your site.
• From backlinks: Google library has billions of web pages. Linking your new page to a known page allows Google to identify it from there.
• URL submission: As a site owner, you can request the crawling of an individual URL in the Google Search Console.

Crawling

This is a discovery process where search engines use a team of robots (crawlers or spiders) to find new and updated content. This can be in the form of blog content, video, images, PDFs, etc., that’s discoverable by links.

Processing and rendering

After Googlebot has crawled pages, it works to understand what the pages are all about. The process involves running the page’s code to discover how it looks to the user. In other words, Googlebot is trying to find all external files involved, including images, CSS and JavaScript files, and store them for indexing.

Indexing

Finally, Google adds the crawled pages to its search index. This is where search engines fetch information when users perform a search.

Google ranking factors

Google currently has more than 200 ranking factors. While some of these factors are known, others are yet to be disclosed. Here are a few of the big ones we know about:

Relevance

Google aims to provide the most relevant information to a search query. As such, relevance is a valuable ranking factor that should drive your content creation strategy.

Backlinks

Getting relevant and high-quality links from other websites to your site can help improve your Google rankings. However, the emphasis here is quality over quantity.

Mobile-friendliness

The use of mobile devices has increased significantly in the past few years. The number of mobile users stood at 15 billion in 2021 and is expected to surpass the 18 billion mark by 2025.

Having a mobile-friendly website means people on mobile devices like smartphones can easily access the web like desktop users. It’s easy to understand why Google considers mobile-friendliness when ranking web pages in search results.

Why you should track Google algorithm updates

Google algorithm is a set of rules that Google uses to provide relevant results to a search query. However, these algorithms keep changing in Google’s efforts to provide a better experience to users and improve SEO performance.

Website owners and marketers should stay abreast of these updates to increase their chances of ranking higher in search engine results.

Google algorithm updates can impact various aspects of your website, including:

1. Organic search traffic
2. Search ranking and visibility
3. Conversions
4. Revenue
5. Return on investment (ROI)

The bottom line is that algorithm updates are not meant to punish website owners but are rather a way to reward sites that provide valuable content and a better user experience.

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How does SEO work?

To help you understand how SEO works, let’s look at how people search on Google. When a user enters a search query into Google’s search bar, Google responds by providing results relevant to that query.

Google aims to deliver the most relevant and useful information to its users.

To do that, Google needs to know that these pages exist, what they contain, and their popularity. Then, using the process outlined above, Google shows the most relevant results from its massive inventory of data.

When performing a search, people use phrases related to what they are searching for. These phrases are called keywords, and users can either type them or say them (voice search).

Google has search quality ratings that analyze the quality of your content to determine when to show it on SERPs. Here’s what these ratings assess:

• The quality and quantity of the content
• Website reputation and site information
• Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (EAT) of the content

All these measures ensure that the most relevant, useful and trustworthy web pages appear on top of search results pages.

Pro tip: Find your search engine rankings by searching the terms you are targeting. If you have a large website, use tools like SEMrush to find other terms you might be ranking for.

Key components of SEO

When learning how to do SEO, it’s important to understand that search engine optimization is a complex process. It’s easiest for beginners to break it down into these five main steps:

1. Keyword and competitor research: Find and analyze terms people use when searching for businesses like yours.
2. Content creation: Develop and publish content with users in mind.
3. On-page SEO: Optimize your website’s pages to gain a higher ranking in search engine results and improve organic traffic
4. Link building: Use off-page SEO strategies to build trust and authority from other sites.
5. Technical SEO: Take practical measures that enable search engines to find, crawl and index content more easily.

Organic vs. paid SEO

As noted above, search engine results pages contain these two types of results: Paid and organic results.

1. Paid results: Have you seen search results with a little green box with the word “Ad” when you perform a Google search? That is a paid result, meaning the website owners have paid to have the page appear on top of the search result list. This type of search engine advertising is also known as Pay Per Click (PPC).
2. Organic results: These are unpaid lists that appear on top of search results because the pages are relevant to what the searcher is looking for.

While paid results give you a higher position in the ads section, it’s crucial to know that most users ignore ads and instead select organic results.

Organic SEO is a long-term game that doesn’t provide overnight results. Be ready to put in the work and exercise patience and persistence to see the desired results.

Besides, Google and other search engines are constantly changing their algorithm, and you need to outsmart your competitors to achieve higher rankings in search engine results.

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Set up for SEO success

How you do SEO determines the results you will get. That said, your SEO efforts can be more effective if your website is set up for success.

Choose the perfect domain name

Pay close attention to the domain name you choose to represent your business online. After all, your domain determines how easy it is for your audience to find and remember your business.

Of course, most domain names work when it comes to SEO, but if you need help choosing a perfect domain name, keep these things in mind:

• Keep it short and simple. Your domain name should be easy to remember. As such, having a long domain name that’s hard to spell out or remember isn’t the way to go — a domain name with six to 14 characters that’s easy to spell is ideal.
• Stick to a .com extension. If the .com option is available, snag it. It’s the most popular domain name extension that many people expect for website names. If your chosen domain name ending in .com isn’t available, you can opt for other trusted domain name extensions such as .net and .org.
• Make your domain unique. Your domain name should stand out from your competitors and uniquely represent your brand and what it stands for.

Related: What is a domain name? Everything you need to know about domain names

Ensure a positive user experience

User experience is now a ranking factor. In fact, Google prioritizes sites that provide a positive user experience when providing results to a search query. Keep these guidelines in mind to create a positive user experience:

1. Have a mobile-friendly website. Most people use mobile devices when surfing the internet. Ensure that your website loads smoothly on both desktop and mobile. Testing your site for mobile-friendliness is easy using the Mobile-Friendly test from Google Search Console.
2. Ensure your pages load faster. Pages that load slowly on desktop and mobile devices provide a bad user experience, negatively impacting your rankings in SERPs.
3. Avoid intrusive pop-ups. While you can’t completely avoid using ads, avoid intrusive pop-up ads as they lead to a poor user experience
4. Secure your site. Use an SSL certificate (HTTPS) to prevent hackers from accessing your site and your users’ data.
5. Make your content readable. Ensure that users (no matter the device) can easily read your content. Also, use a perfect design that reflects your brand.

Related: How to add an SSL to your website — The ultimate guide on SSLs

Choose the best website structure for your business

A website’s structure involves how a website’s pages are organized, how they’re connected, and how to navigate to different pages.

Have a logical site structure that allows visitors and search engines to find content easily on your site.

You can select from three site structure options:

1. Linear or sequential structure. Best for small websites that want to present a product, service or brand in a linear manner that follows a logical path of actions.
2. Network structure. Also called web-linked, this structure allows any site page to be accessed from any other page. It’s ideal for websites with a few pages that are interconnected.
3. Hierarchical. This site structure follows a hierarchy of categories. It’s the most popular among the three options and works on any website.

Why is site structure important for SEO?

When learning SEO, it’s important to understand that a solid website structure is key to Google’s goal of serving up the most relevant search results. Here’s why:

• A logical site structure enables search engines to evaluate your pages when providing results to a search query.
• Having a solid site structure helps handle many technical SEO aspects responsible for crawling and indexing.
• An effective site structure makes it easier for a search engine to understand what your page is all about so it can show it to relevant search queries.
• It makes it easier for search engines to locate new pages.

Above all, an effective site structure facilitates a positive user experience. And user experience is a ranking factor for SEO.

Create a solid URL structure

A mentioned earlier, a URL is the internet address people use to access a web page. It consists of a protocol, a domain name and a path to a specific page on the website. To better understand these components, look at the below URL:

1. Protocol: https:/
2. Domain: godaddy.com
3. Path: /garage/invest-in-seo/

The best URL structure varies based on the type of website. For example, URL structures for ecommerce sites will vary from those of a blog website. Likewise, a URL for a social network will vary from that of a government website.

The above basic URL structure applies when creating a proper URL structure, regardless of the website’s purpose.

How does URL structure impact SEO?

URLs act as the link between your content and your users. That said, here’s how URLs can impact SEO:

• User experience. An effective URL structure should allow users and search engines to understand what a page is all about. For example, the example URL above clearly describes what website users will find when they reach their destination. This enhances the user experience, which is a Google ranking factor.
• Rankings. An effective URL helps search engine bots to crawl and index your website when providing search results to a search query.

That means optimizing your URLs can help improve Google PageRank (PR). Of course, avoid keyword stuffing in your URLs, as this is considered a black-hat SEO technique that will hurt your SEO efforts.

Follow these best practices for SEO-friendly URLs:

1. Use HTTPS protocol to make it more secure.
2. Ensure the URL is relevant.
3. Keep your URL short and simple.
4. Avoid keyword stuffing.
5. Avoid stop words (the, and, of, or, etc.) in your URL.
6. Use lowercase letters.

Related: Domain SEO — Can including keywords in domain names improve search ranking?

Install plugins

Have a WordPress website? WordPress offers powerful in-built tools to help you optimize your content for SEO, and you can use SEO plugins to turbocharge your SEO efforts. Popular SEO plugins like Yoast and Rankmath offer great suggestions and an overview of what you should change on each page to boost its ranking capabilities.

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Conduct keyword research

You can hardly talk about SEO without mentioning keywords. Users enter keywords when searching for something online, and search engines use keywords to find the information that matches the search query.

That makes keyword research a crucial aspect of SEO success.

Keyword research involves finding and analyzing phrases people use when searching for something on search engines. You can boost your search rankings by sprinkling keywords naturally throughout your website content because doing so tells search engines that your website has information that’s relevant to their search.

When your article ranks higher for the right keywords, Google will show it to users when they use those keywords to find a solution or information online. That can mean more traffic for your website.

Note: Keyword research also helps create an effective content marketing strategy, of which SEO plays an integral role.

Benefits of keyword research

In addition to improving your SEO efforts, conducting keyword research can:

• Provide insight into current market trends. Effective keyword research can provide great insight into your marketing efforts. It provides an opportunity to understand what your audience is looking for and the current relevant topics.
• Help develop authority and trust. The insights you glean into current marketing trends can help you build your brand as an authority leader in your industry. You can use your keyword research findings to create the industry-specific content that people are searching for now.
• Increase organic traffic. Identifying the best keywords and optimizing your content for those keywords will help your content rank higher on SERPs. The higher your content ranks for your target keywords, the more traffic you’ll get.

Related: How to do SEO keyword research to drive traffic to your website

What is search intent?

Search intent refers to what the user intends to solve when using specific keywords on a search engine.

Identifying user intent is crucial if you want your page to rank higher on search engines like Google.

Keywords can have different meanings for different users. That means even after identifying your target keywords, you have to interpret them to ensure they match the user’s search intent.

Search intent is divided into three categories:

1. Navigational. The user knows what they want to find (e.g., a specific domain, page, address, product, etc.).
2. Informational. The user wants to learn something or is looking for answers. The searches might be a question or phrases like why, where, what, how, etc.
3. Transactional. The user is searching for something they intend to buy. That means they know what they want and are probably looking for the best product page.

The easiest way to identify the user’s intent for a keyword is to enter the keyword into a search engine and note the type of results that show up.

How to do keyword research

When performing keyword research, look for words and phrases that you can rank for on the first page of SERPs. Here’s how to find them:

Brainstorm

Ask yourself some questions, including:

• What are the main themes/topics/focus areas on your website, especially on its most popular pages?
• What do you want to achieve with your content?
• What terms would you enter into a search engine to get your website among the top results?
• What search terms do you think your audience uses?

Then, ask other people what terms or phrases they would use to search for your website or pages without using the domain.

Make a list of all the keywords you find valuable. You can refine them in the next steps.

Study your competitors’ keywords

Another great way to identify keywords to use on your site is by checking what keywords your competitors rank for. The first step in this process is to identify your competitors — use your brainstormed keyword list to identify your competitors by searching one of your keywords to see what sites appear on top of SERPs.

Once you identify your competitor sites, leverage competitor tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer to analyze the site’s pages with the most traffic and the keywords they are targeting. Once you identify these keywords, create better content around them to increase your chances of outranking your competitors.

Related: How to stand out from your competitors on Google Search

Analyze customer communications

Mine for additional keywords by digging through customer communications. Look for common questions from your customers and the terms they’re using to ask them.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter also can provide valuable audience insights. Pay keen attention to what customers are saying about your products and services to identify keywords to target.

Research related terms

Complete your keyword research by researching related terms. Enter a keyword on a search engine to see additional terms people might be using.

You’ve probably seen this when searching for something on Google — you notice a section with searches related to what you’re searching for as you scroll down the SERPs. These keywords can add to your bucket of target terms and phrases.

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Optimize content for search engines

Once you’re done with keyword research, it’s time to create content and optimize it for search engines.

The best SEO content provides valuable information on what your customers and prospects are looking for online.

People turn to search engines to look for high-quality, relevant and engaging content on a subject. To create valuable content, find unique ideas to address users’ questions. Then present them in a well-structured manner to ensure users and search engines can access them easily.

Research your audience’s needs

You’re trying to identify what your users want and need, which should be easy if you’ve already done the keyword research. You’ll want to be as specific as possible to narrow your field of competitors for the same search terms.

When you focus on a niche, it’s easier to create unique, detailed content that has a better chance of ranking higher in the SERPs for long-tail keywords.

Try to tackle the content from different angles and be as thorough as possible.

Research other ranking content

Creating content that can rank higher on SERPs means understanding what users are looking for and creating better content than what is already available on the internet. While keyword research helps you understand search intent, you can get additional insights by using the top-ranking pages as a proxy.

Take time to analyze what’s already ranking to wrap your head around the search intent.

When analyzing the top-ranking pages in your niche, pay attention to the content type, format and angle. The information you get will help you choose the best content type/format and find a unique way to present the content.

Create content for users

Here’s the heart of how to do SEO: creating the actual content.

Outline, draft and edit

Start by creating an outline. Include a general overview of your content headings, subheadings and format. Of course, the format will vary depending on the type of content.

Once your outline is ready, create the first draft of your content. You’re going for unique content that fully covers the topic and showcases your expertise in the niche. Find engaging sub-topics that even the top-ranking pages don’t address.

Here are ideas to help create unique content that your audience will find valuable:

• Expand on popular existing content with anecdotes and examples gleaned from your professional experience.
• Give your content a unique perspective. For instance, you might include quotes from your customers that support the ideas you’re covering.
• Gather original research and share your findings in a variety of formats (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics).
• Compile the questions you get most often from your customers into an FAQ that you keep up-to-date.
• Create a photo gallery that shows your products/services in action, with keyword-optimized captions.

Next comes editing, where you review your content for factual and grammatical errors and readability issues. If you’re unsure what to look out for when editing your content, consider asking for feedback from a colleague or a friend.

Make your content SEO-friendly

Optimizing your website content helps both users and search engines. Basic SEO practices — such as crafting an effective SEO title, meta description and subheadings — tell users at a glance what they’ll find when they click your link in the SERPs. And these SEO elements give search engines the information they need to index and rank your site’s contents.

Write your SEO title, meta description and subheads

In most cases, visitors look at the page’s SEO title and meta description to determine whether they will click on a page in the SERPs.

• SEO title: Also called the HTML title tag, these are the words that look like the headline on the search result. Search engines give more emphasis on the early words in your SEO title, so consider putting your focus keyword at the beginning or near the start of the page title.
• Meta description: These are the words below the headline that describe what’s on the page. Like the SEO title, visitors see the first words in the meta description and will decide whether to click on the page based on the keywords they see.

Once they click the page, your subheadings and content formatting will influence how long they stay.

Use H1, H2 and H3 headings

Heading tags are like ranks of duty, with H1 being the most important, followed by H2 and so forth. The information on each tag relates to the main topic, although each subheading will be unique.

Headings provide a great way for users to understand the information on a page logically.

While headings alone don’t have a huge impact on SEO, they can help visitors find direct answers to a subject.

Here’s a simple breakdown to help understand what H1, H2 and H3 headings do:

1. H1: Includes the page’s target keyword(s) to help explain what it’s all about. This might be the headline on a blog page.
2. H2: Adds structure to the page, breaking up blocks of content and making it easy for visitors to understand what they’ll find in that section.
3. H3: Helps further break up the content to make it more scannable.

Though headings might not make or break your SEO efforts, they do help search engines understand what’s on the page and they enhance the user experience — keeping visitors on your site, which helps with SEO.

Optimize images and media

In addition to optimizing your written content, it’s important to make visual content like images and video search-friendly. There are many best practices for this type of optimization, but for the beginner just learning how to do SEO, start here:

• Select images that align to the story you’re telling. Remember, search engines crawl for relevant content, and that includes images.
• Use the correct file format. In most cases, you’ll want to use images in JPEG or PNG format. They are easily compressed and render well on most devices.
• Decrease image size. Use a free image compression tool to make images smaller so they load faster.
• Add image alt tags. Give your image a file name and “alt text,” including keywords if relevant, that accurately describes it. This also enhances accessibility.
• Include video transcripts. They make videos more accessible, help search engines understand what the video’s about, and provide another opportunity to include target keywords and links to related content on your site.

Taking these few steps can make a big difference for your on-page SEO efforts.

Keep updating your content

Since search engines aim to provide up-to-date and relevant information to users, make sure you keep your content fresh. Schedule a few hours each month to review your content for outdated material and update accordingly.

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Measuring SEO Performance

Creating an effective SEO strategy, keeping track of Google algorithm changes, and consistently adhering to SEO best practices is the best path to increasing your website’s search rankings.

And part of that process involves looking at what’s working and what’s not. That’s where Google Analytics and Google Search Console come into play.

Google Analytics

Setting up Google Analytics is a great way to analyze SEO results on your site. Among other factors, adding Google Analytics to your website can show you:

• the number of visits to a page
• how long visitors stay on your site
• how many of your visitors convert

Getting started with Google Analytics isn’t too complicated. You first need to create an account and add an Account Name to set it up. This can be your business name or a generic account name.

Once you set up your account, add a property (the website name and URL). After that, go to the data-sharing setting and select your options. Lastly, add the tracking code to your website to connect it to your new Google Analytics account.

Related: How to track user behavior with Google Analytics

Google Search Console

Google Search Console helps analyze your website’s SEO performance and how users find you on Google. In other words, this free service from Google will help you understand and monitor your site’s presence in Google search results.

The information you get helps identify opportunities and areas to work on to improve your position on SERPs.

Related: Using Google Analytics and Google Search Console to find out what’s bringing people to your website

Metrics to help measure SEO results

Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console will provide a wealth of information about your website’s performance — so much info that it’s common for those just learning how to do SEO to get overwhelmed. When you’re just starting out, focus on a handful of key metrics.

Keyword performance in SERPs

Know where your target keywords currently rank on search results pages so you can make adjustments as necessary.

Organic traffic

Higher organic traffic indicates organic search visibility for your site — this is the goal. By focusing on organic traffic from sources such as search engines and social networks, you look at your website’s visibility for your target keywords.

Pages per session

Pages per session is an important user engagement metric that measures the average number of pages users visit before leaving your site. If users visit more pages on your site per session, your content is engaging and relevant to the visitors. It also indicates that your navigation is user-friendly.

Exit pages

What are the pages that make visitors lose interest in your site? This is another important metric to track, as it might mean that those pages need reworking.

Reasons that can increase the exit rate on your pages include:

1. Lack of clear layout and content structure
2. Not having clear internal links and clear calls-to-action that guide visitors to relevant pages
3. Not adding visuals for better engagement

Organic leads and sales

Lastly, the most important factor you can use to measure SEO success is by looking at whether your efforts have an impact on your bottom line. In other words, does your content help you

achieve your set goals?

Set up your goals in Google Analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts.

This helps track your organic traffic and goals by landing pages. In other words, what percentage of users from an organic search convert?

If you’re satisfied with the information you get from the above reports, you’re doing just fine with SEO. However, if you’re not generating organic leads and sales, it’s time to rework your strategy or change your content structure.

Back to top

How to do SEO: Next steps

Search engine optimization ranks No. 1 among strategies to drive more organic traffic to your website. Understanding where and how to start is only the beginning. Once you feel comfortable with the basics, explore more technical SEO tactics and even consider hiring an expert to accelerate your growth.

Above all, remember that SEO is a long game that requires patience and continuous learning to yield consistent results.

When writing about tips for producing content, I think back to a time many years ago when I interviewed an Academy Award-winning screenplay writer. Paris Hilton was his neighbor and he lived in the heart of Hollywood. He had achieved extreme career success by creating screenplays that captivated audiences.

“How do you produce content that people actually want to watch,” I asked. “When you have a blank computer screen staring back at you, and you’re in the back of a noisy coffee shop, how do you put words to paper?”

The screenplay writer smiled and gave a pretty simple answer:

“Trust that you’re a valid audience. If you can please yourself, you have to trust that there are enough people out there who will be pleased as well.”

Even in business, this advice holds true. You have to trust that you are the expert in your industry to give valuable information that people want to read. Producing engaging content is a challenge for content writers, small business owners and anyone leveraging their blog to attract prospective readers.ma

To help you create meaningful content, we asked marketing leaders and small business owners for their best content creation tips.

Related: 12 ways to improve your content marketing

11 tips for producing content for your target audience

From leveraging Google to relying on data, here are several strategies that may help you produce valuable content for your website.

1. Google is your best friend
2. Search Pinterest to find new topic ideas
3. Monitor how your content impacts conversions
4. Build up your top performers
5. Interview your target audience
6. Use search listening tools
7. Focus on customer pain points using “AIDA”
8. Pick keywords aligning with a user search intent
9. Be an industry resource
10. Visit spaces where your customers ask questions
11. Analyze content gaps and social media

Below, you’ll have an opportunity to read through advice from key business leaders and see why many of these tips for producing content are so successful.

1. Google is your best friend

All good content starts with some keyword research. But great content starts with “key question” research.

As you examine your target, focus on what questions they have about your product, service or category. A great tool to find out what those questions are is good ol’ Google.

Type in a keyword, scroll down the search results until you get to “People also searched for.” Here you will find great questions that people are turning to Google for answers.

You can be their answer. Go build great content that answers these questions and you will be well on your way to being an authority on topics you know that interests your target.

Eric Rutin, Easy Marketing Lessons

Related: How to do SEO keyword research to drive traffic to your website

2. Search Pinterest to find new topic ideas

A large swath of my audience is on Pinterest, so I utilize the auto-fill in the search tool in Pinterest to find more interesting long-tail keywords — [this works] for content that I may not have considered before utilizing more traditional keyword search platforms, such as Ahrefs.

Not only will this content perform well on Pinterest, but I know that there is an audience interested in this topic. And, I can increase the chance that they will click through to other interesting content on my website.

Kristine Thorndyke, Test Prep Nerds

Related: The entrepreneurs’ guide to Pinterest marketing

3. Monitor how your content impacts conversions

Yes, you should be measuring content performance by looking at metrics like time on page, bounce rate, and more. But if you’re not monitoring which pieces of content are actually driving conversions, then you won’t know what content is meeting your audience’s needs.

To do this, start by enabling ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics or setting up a goal based on what you want your audience to do. Then, use the Assisted Conversions report to see which types of content are moving the needle.

Content is almost always more top-of-the-funnel than bottom. By using the Assisted Conversions report you can see which pieces are contributing throughout the user journey and scale from there.

Sylvia Kang, Mira

4. Build up your top performers

My best tip for producing content that readers will actually enjoy is to see what’s currently ranking and write something better. If long-form content (such as ultimate guides) is ranking for your target keyword, then create an ultimate guide –– but make it stand out.

Use what is already performing well as a baseline, then add another layer of value. This could be something like adding a free downloadable PDF guide to complement the blog post.

Sophia Orlando, Markitors

5. Interview your target audience

The best way to produce content that meets your audience’s needs is to interview your existing customers. Speak to them and find out the challenges they are facing. Discover the hot topic in their industry that everyone is talking about. Once you know what these topics are, you can produce content directly addressing your audience’s questions.

Daniel Lee, Strategyst

6. Use search listening tools

To produce content that meets your target audience’s needs, don’t just take your best guess. To get to grips with what your audience really wants to read, use search listening tools like Answer The Public.

Answer The Public listens to autocomplete data from search engines like Google, then generates a list of audience questions, prepositions and comparisons.

Just by running one or two words through the platform’s tool, you can access and draw from these insights to create content that meets your target audience’s needs. When I’m hitting writer’s block and struggling with what content to plan next, search listening tools always get me back on track and provide a boatload of potential content ideas.

Aaron Gray, NO-BS Marketplace

7. Focus on customer pain points using “AIDA”

Customers have multiple needs. Needs are categorized often as “must” and “nice to have” criteria. But ultimately, there is always one need that creates pain. This is the one need to tackle within your content.

How do you do this? With the proven AIDA model,  an acronym for:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

First, get the attention of the customer by demonstrating you understand their needs and have a good solution.

Second, spark interest with details on your solution and show the user exactly how to solve their problem.

Third, create desire by showing the user how much easier their life is once they purchase your solution. Create the “to-be” state of the customer.

And last, get the user to act through a demo, free call, download or a purchase.

Stephan Wenger, B2B Marketing World

8. Pick keywords aligning with a user search intent

Before crafting your content, first categorize its ideal reader into one of three user search intent categories:

• Informational searchers
• Commercial searchers
• Transactional searchers

Informational searchers are the most passive and broad — [they hunt] online across multiple page-one search engine results pages (SERPs) to better understand a topic.

Commercial searchers go next and [consist of users] searching for the best solution to their questions or problems — not just information.

Finally, transactional searchers are folks who go online specifically to buy something right now.

Once you’ve identified where your reader sits in these three categories, you can scaffold your target keywords accordingly — [aim] to capture their interest and meet their needs in your content. In doing so, you’ve identified the top, middle and bottom funnels. [This] helps ensure that users will find what they need when interacting with your content.

Morgan Taylor, Sourcery

9. Be an industry resource

We see the importance of producing quality content when building our marketing plan, so we focus on addressing our audience’s search intent. You can attract users to your website, but if you’re not answering their questions or filling their needs, you’ll find that they quickly navigate away from the page.

Find relevant keywords and add value to the conversation. Position your business as a resource in your industry.

Blake Murphey, American Pipeline Solutions

10. Visit spaces where your customers ask questions

[Find] the spaces where your ideal customers spend time. A great option is to join or browse Facebook groups that are relevant to your niche. What questions are the people in those groups asking? Are there any recurring topics?

Quora is another platform that can better help you get into the mind of your target audience.

Another place to find inspiration is to talk to your customer service team. What questions do they receive the most from customers or potential customers? Does there appear to be a disconnect anywhere between information available on the website and the questions they hear the most?

Sara Bodner, Conklin Media

11. Analyze content gaps and social media

Perform a content gap analysis. This helps you find topics and keywords that people are searching for or talking about — [especially when] there isn’t much existing content about it.

Doing this would give you ideas for content that meets the needs of your target audience [that isn’t] currently being addressed. Reading social media comments and questions, and seeing what’s trending on social media, also helps in generating content ideas that meet the needs of the target audience.

Ben Rollins, Axon Optics

Make content that connects with your readers

The tips for producing content above will better equip you at connecting with prospective customers.

A perfect piece of content is one that speaks to the needs of your customers.

If every reader can find value in what you’ve created, then you know you’re ready to hit the “publish” button and share with your stakeholders and followers.

Use these content creation tips as a guide when creating your next piece of content and see how it impacts your small business.

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

Of course, a wide variety of the of the search engine optimisation tactics that can be found on line will prove to be highly valuable resources, but trusting all of the tips and tricks that you come across could have adverse effects for your campaign, especially if the content that you are reading details out of date practices.

In the article below, we will discuss some of the most commonly seen mistakes made within SEO, helping you to avoid unnecessary damage to the performance of your company website.

Your Site Lacks Quality Backlinks

The creation of quality backlinks to your business page from reputable, high authority external sites is an extremely popular SEO management recommendation, these aforementioned links playing a vital role in the improvement of many aspects of your campaign.

Link building is a great off-page optimisation technique, allowing you to build the authority of your company website as a way to improve your ranking position within the organic search results. This is a must for any business looking to improve their online visibility or brand recognition, meaning that their website will be shown to a wider target audience and will thus see a boost in overall traffic and sales as a result.

While the creation of links leading back to your website from various external sources is vital for the optimisation and management for your SEO campaign, the quality and relevance of these backlinks is also a factor of great importance. If you are aiming to rank well within the search engine results (which is a goal that all businesses should strive towards!), the links that you are forming should be of a high quality and relevance to the industry in which your company operates.

The overall quality of the sites that your business is linking to can have a knock-on effect on the performance of your own website. Forming backlinks with sites that are completely irrelevant to your field, or those known for their poor reputation, will do more to hinder your website than help it. Associating your brand with poor quality pages will affect the authority of your own company website, and should thus be avoided at all costs.

Your Site Misuses Outbound Links

Outbound links are something that are often avoided completely within modern day SEO strategies, being the reason as to why so many marketing experts would now consider guest posting to be an ineffective and outdated technique. However, this is far from the truth, and is actually one of the many common misconceptions within SEO.

While filling your site’s main navigational channels with endless external links is not a recommended practice and would definitely cause some issues for the performance of your SEO campaign, this does not mean that outbound links should be avoided altogether. Creating natural links within your on-page content to reputable sources that provide your readers with additional information is actually a great way to enrich the blog articles and landing pages that you publish to your website. This will cause no damage to your brand’s SEO campaign, but can actually assist in the improvement of your authority and reputation.

The issue with outbound links comes not with their use on your company website, but in how they are used, as the placement of such links will play a vital role in whether this common SEO practice will either help or hurt your online presence. Any outbound links that you choose to feature on your site should occur naturally within the on-page content that is presented to your customer base.

Whether it be your landing page content or a blog post, links should only be placed if and where it makes sense to do so. Placing outbound links randomly throughout your text or all in one place is considered bad practice, increasing the likelihood that your content be picked up as spam and your site ultimately be penalised by the search engines.

To avoid outbound links negatively impacting the quality score and performance of your website, links should only be placed as and when it makes sense to do so, using these to provide readers with additional information that will enrich the text published to your company website. As with link building, the quality and reputation of the websites that you link to will impact the authority of your own business site, so it’s important that your brand avoids linking to pages that could harm your domain.

The setup and maintenance of a successful search engine optimisation campaign can be a difficult, and sometimes even daunting, task for those who find themselves unsure of where to start. With so many different strategies claiming to provide the best tactics for effective website optimisation, how do you know which advice you can trust?

Luckily, there are a number of highly reputable online SEO courses made readily available to entrepreneurs across the globe, providing expert advice and a helping hand to those looking to optimise their business’ online presence.

SEO is an excellent tool for improving your ranking position and visibility within the organic search results, but it’s vital that your campaign is managed correctly, helping you to avoid any unnecessary mistakes!

Optimize for crawlability

Crawlability is the ability of search engines to access, index, and understand a website. This includes both technical factors (e.g., HTML validation) and navigation/structure strategies that make sense for search engines.

The most important thing you can do for crawlability is to ensure your HTML is valid. If it’s not valid, then chances are good that your site won’t be crawled by Google or any other search engine (and in fact, it may even get filtered out). S

Next, make sure your website has a structured navigation system based on meaningful URLs so that users can easily navigate through the site without getting lost or frustrated—which means they’ll spend more time there and then come back again.

Getting all of this sorted is difficult, which is why you need to hire an SEO industry with specific experience in your industry. For example, if you are a SaaS company, you should consider hiring a SaaS SEO agency that can help you better optimize the crawlabilty of your website for both Google and SaaS users specifically.

Use page titles and meta descriptions to your advantage

Page titles are the first thing that search engines display in their search results, so it’s important to use them to describe your content.

Meta descriptions are used by search engines to display a summary of the page’s content. They’re not used by search engines as a ranking factor but can increase click-through rates and help build trust among users.

Write compelling CTA buttons

CTA buttons are the most important part of a conversion funnel. The first step in optimizing a website for SEO is to make sure your CTAs are clear, relevant, actionable, and easy to find. A good CTA button should be easy to read, stand out from the rest of the page and encourage site visitors to click on it. If you’re optimizing for mobile devices, there should be no doubt about what each link does when tapped upon.

Add structured data to your website

Structured data is a common language that can be used to represent a variety of information about people, places, and things on the web. Structured data can help you indicate your content’s intent to search engines so that they know what kind of pages are on your site and what each page is about. This allows you to get more traffic from Google in the form of rich results (such as images), carousels, knowledge panels, etc., which improves both user experience and SEO.

If you want your website to be found when people Google a relevant search term, you need to make sure it’s optimized for SEO either with the help of an SEO agency or online tools. There are many tools out there that can help you find the best keywords and see how competitive those words are.

Once you know what keywords you want to target, don’t forget to embed those into your copy—your website’s meta tags, as well as its URL, should include the keyword for these strategies for optimizing your website for SEO to work.

Wondering how to improve your website’s SEO and increase web traffic fast? There are plenty of actionable steps you can take today. Most don’t even require a web developer or coding knowledge to get started.

Below we’ll review 12 best practises you can easily work into your business plans to help you:

• Rank higher in search engines
• Grow your audience
• Attract more leads

We’ll also give you tips on how GoDaddy can help you on your journey, plus share plenty of free resources you can refer to along the way.

1. Optimize your URLs

Optimizing your URLs is a good way to improve SEO quickly. It’s something that takes little effort but can help boost your rankings when done right. Here are a few best practices to look out for.

Go for shorter URL titles

When it comes to URLs, you want to keep them short and compelling. Shorter URLs are often easier to remember, which makes them more shareable and higher ranking. Make sure your URL is free of fluff words (like “and” or “for”) and easy to understand.

Note: GoDaddy’s Website Builder automatically optimizes your URL title for you by limiting it to 25 characters. Simply type in your URL title into the designated text box for “Page Title” and you’re done. It also fills in any spaces with hyphens following web convention.

Include primary keywords

Adding a primary keyword to your URL is another best practice for optimization and should also be applied to your:

• Meta title: This is the blue header in the search engine results page
• Meta description: This is the copy that sits beneath the meta title
• On-page title: This is the actual title of your work at the top

Aim for placing your keyword closer to the beginning of your URL title for optimal results.

Keep it relevant

URLs should also be relevant to the content you’re displaying on that specific page. Keeping them aligned with the page copy allows Google’s search bots to easily understand and identify the information for search queries.

The more relevant your information is to a search query, the higher it ranks on Google.

Think about how relevant it will be for future use. You don’t want it to be overly specific that it becomes less relevant over time.

For example, you can make a URL more applicable for future use if you avoid adding a specific year at the end. Peek the following URL endings to see how they contrast.

Instead of a URL that ends in: .com/best-fathers-day-gifts-2022

Go for something like: .com/best-fathers-day-gifts

If other websites link to your page, the URL without the year enables that page to keep hold of any authority and associated rankings in the future.

A note on changing URL titles

Editing your URL title is an option using GoDaddy’s Website Builder, but it’s not recommended you make any changes when dealing with older existing pages.

Changing an existing URL can hurt your SEO and result in decreased traffic, since it’s likely you have backlinks attached to the post you’re trying to change. This means that anytime someone finds the old link through a partnering site or newsletter, they might end up at the dead link instead.

Unless you really need to for rebranding purposes, it’s best you avoid this route to prevent any damage to you SEO.

2. Optimize metadata

The term “metadata” comes up a lot when researching how to improve SEO quickly. It refers to the data on a webpage that provides Google with information about a particular site. In other words, it’s data that describes other data.

By itself, metadata won’t affect SEO rankings. But it can help in the following areas:

• Boost engagement
• Increase click-through rates
• Give you the upper edge over your competitors

It’s a small piece of the SEO puzzle that is often overlooked but can be beneficial when combined with other best practices. Let’s look at two ways to improve your meta data below.

Meta descriptions

Meta descriptions appear in the search results page underneath the meta title. It often gives a quick snippet of what the web page is about and typically includes a call to action (CTA) to encourage more clicks.

Examples of these CTAs could look like:

• “Shop now”
• “Schedule an appointment”
• “Click here to read more”

As noted earlier, you’ll want to include a primary keyword within the description and keep the copy to 155 characters or less. The primary keyword will also appear in bold anytime it matches a searcher’s query.

Meta titles

The meta title (aka title tag) is the text shown in large blue font in the search engine results page. It’s often the first thing searchers will see and can sometimes be confused with the H1 tag.

However, the meta title and H1 tag are two separate things.

The meta title is named with SEO and Google in mind, while an H1 tag is more for the user’s benefit. A lot of times digital marketers will use the same title for both the meta title and H1 tag to cause less confusion for users.

When naming your meta title, you should always:

Editing the meta title and meta description is easy using GoDaddy’s Website Builder. Simply use the editor and go to the page you need optimized. Click on Settings (cog symbol) and then select Get Found on Google to edit what you need.

3. Check your speed

An important element of improving SEO is speed. The time it takes for your webpage to load will affect whether your users stay to engage or bounce back in search of something better.

Between July and August 2021, Google rolled out a measure of core web vitals (CWV) to help website owners evaluate their overall page performance.

This report is based on real-world user data (or field data) and includes three segments that evaluates a user’s experience loading a webpage — two of which are related to a site’s speed.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each one for reference:

• Largest contentful paint (LCP): This refers to the largest block of text, video, or visuals that take up the most amount of time to load after a user clicks on your site.
• First input delay (FID): This is the amount of time it takes for a browser to respond to a user’s first interaction on your site (typically when they click on a link or tap on a button).
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS): This has to do with any layout shifts your user be experiencing as they interact with your page. Too many unexpected shifts could result in a bad user experience if left unchecked.

One best practice is to score below 1.3 seconds when reaching the First Byte. This means that the overall responsiveness and speediness of your website should fall within this time frame after a user clicks onto your site from a search query.

How to optimize your CWV score

Rankings are affected by a CWV score, so it’s best to aim high in good rankings to increase web traffic.

Google’s search advocate, John Mueller, noted in a recent YouTube discussion that if a site had lost or gained traffic steadily over the period of the CWV roll out, then it was likely related to the website’s CWV score.

GoDaddy’s Website Builder scores nearly 68% in good CWV rankings and outperforms most other competitors. It’s a great option to consider if you’re looking for low-hassle performance speed on your site. Plus, it includes other fool-proof elements like SSL certificates and more.

For non-GoDaddy sites, your biggest priority is to minimize image sizes before uploading to your site. Try using an image compressor to cut down on load time and apply a lazy loading plugin if you have a WordPress site. This will display all images below the fold only when the user scrolls down.

4. Find the right keywords for your content

Improving SEO means creating content Google can easily comprehend. That’s why optimizing with keywords helps. It allows Google bots to decipher what your page is about so that it can provide relevant results to search queries.

Let’s take a look at some best practices for keyword usage.

How to choose the best keywords

When creating content for your site, try to think of phrases and terms your target audience may be typing into a search query. For example, if you’re a retailer that specializes in kid’s clothing, you could aim for keywords like:

• Toddler girl dresses for spring
• Zipper onesies for baby boys
• Activewear for boys and girls

Keep an eye on your competitors and note how they utilize their keywords for search queries.

It’s important to know the keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not.

Let these findings guide you when deciding what keywords to create for your own content. Ensure your version is better optimized and more informative to win the upper edge.

Where to include primary keywords

Here are other areas where you should include primary keywords throughout your text:

• Each page on your site: Include a primary keyword for every 60 – 150 words in each of your posts. Ensure they sound natural and avoid keyword stuffing to prevent Google from penalizing you.
• On-page title: Make sure each page on your website has a primary keyword within the on-page title at the top.
• First 100 words of every page: Include a primary keyword in your opening paragraph for each post. The sooner you introduce it, the better.

It’s also best to add a secondary keyword that’s similar in meaning to your primary keyword. This provides Google with extra information (or clues) to what your page is about.

Editor’s Note: GoDaddy’s website builder automatically assigns your primary keyword as a required H1 header tag in the backend, so there’s no extra coding necessary for you. This makes things easier any time you want to adjust the font size or style. Simply edit as you go.

Keyword length

When it comes to keyword length, there are two things to remember:

• Short keywords with a large volume are harder to rank for and are more competitive
• Longer keyword phrases with three to five words are easier to rank for and are less competitive

Let’s imagine you run a clothing shop. Instead of choosing a generalized keyword like “T-shirts,” you can opt for something more specific like “cruelty-free vegan T-shirts.” The competition for the longer phrase is lower and has a better chance at ranking higher on Google.

Duplicate keywords

On a similar note, you want to avoid including the same keywords and phrases on multiple pages of your website. This is known as keyword cannibalization and could lead users to the wrong page when they enter your site from a search query. It’s also not good for bounce-back rates.

The same goes for duplicate content. Try to avoid creating posts that are similar in topic, since this could confuse the search engine bots.

An example would be targeting “divorce lawyer near Los Angeles” on one page and “how to find a divorce lawyer near me” on another. The angles are too similar for Google to recognize the difference.

Helpful tools and resources

To help you optimize strategically, you can use the following tools when deciding which keywords to go for:

• Google’s Keyword Planner: This is a tool for finding keywords that many digital marketers tend to utilize – especially in advertising. But you don’t need to be an advertiser to use it. Anyone can sign up for free and use it for insight on keyword search volume.
• KWFinder: If you’re looking for a tool with more advanced features, try KWFinder. It offers a free trial and helps you find keywords that are easy to rank for.
• Keyword Tool: Ecommerce store owners can find extra ideas using predictive search tools like this one. It gives you free keyword search suggestions for Amazon, eBay and more.

Remember, it’s best to avoid using keywords that have volumes in the highest and lowest categories. Refer to these tools any time you need help.

5. Write for your audience

Developing content that improves SEO quickly should be centred around your audience first and foremost.

You need to know who you are trying to target before you begin writing posts for your website.

This will allow you to create content that is genuinely helpful to potential customers visiting your site. It’s also something Google will reward you for in rankings and will lead users to CTAs that apply to:

• Purchases
• Email sign-ups
• Inquiries and more

When drafting content for your site, you should note that there are two main categories to consider:

• Standard pages and blog posts: These typically consist of informational content. A standard page should have a minimum of 300 words, while a blog post should have 700 or more.
• Ecommerce product pages: Ecommerce pages focus more on product details. The recommended word count for these pages should range between 120-200 words.

Let’s discuss them even further to help you better understand why both are important for improving SEO.

Pages and blog posts

Pages and blog posts provide informational content to users but differ in the type of content displayed. Pages are more static and don’t often need updating (like About Me or Contact pages), while blog posts provide constant updates to queries that are relevant to your product or service.

Google ranks all web pages according to a mixture of:

• Relevancy for the searcher
• Value of content on a page
• The page’s uniqueness
• A website’s overall authority

Authority takes time and is something you earn as your audience grows. It’s not something you can control right away. But optimizing the other categories can help you achieve authority success down the line.

Dwell time

Google rewards websites with higher rankings if searchers stick around for a while (aka dwell time).

To increase dwell time, owners should write for their prospective customer and not for Google.

Write as if you are encouraging a friend to take the next step with your business offer. Use words that inspire and provide informative content that helps users with pain points.

Ecommerce product pages

Ecommerce pages provide users with information about your product or service, but also convinces them to follow-through with a purchase.

Many ecommerce sites miss out on visibility due to lack of content, which makes it hard to rank.

A general recommendation to improve SEO is to start by optimizing product and service pages first. You can do this by:

• Using long-tail keywords: This helps increase opportunities in competitive spaces and even converts better with keywords that are low in search volume. It’s better to have a small increase in web traffic and sales, rather than none.
• Hitting the 120-200 minimum word count: Do this for all products in your online catalogue and avoid writing beyond this range. Writing too much could be a distraction to the potential sale.
• Uploading enticing images: Try to aim for at least three images per product, including one that shows it in use. You might also consider adding product-specific text to images that highlight dimensions and special features.
• Avoid copying manufacturer descriptions: Google will consider this duplicate content and you’ll end up taking a hit to your SEO.

Related: How to boost ecommerce search rankings in 8 steps

6.Leverage SEO with a blog

Blogging is the most efficient way to increase web traffic online. They serve many purposes but are often used for informational content. Even Airbnb and Paypal use blog posts to attract visitors to their site.

Here are just a few ways blogs can improve SEO rankings for your site:

• Drive organic traffic to your site: Incorporating long tail keywords into your posts can help bring new users into your site via Google.
• Increase dwell time: Posts that have engaging content will keep users on your site longer.
• Boost authority: Informational posts are often picked up by other sites who want to linkback to your site as a source.

Focus on quality over volume

When it comes to blog content, you want to ensure your posts offer users valuable information that’s helpful and relevant.

Don’t post articles for the sake of filling up space on your site.

Instead, aim to solve customer problems by answering common questions they might have.

For example, a wedding planner might write a long form article titled “What does a wedding planner do?” to address a common query users search for.

Remember to focus on one primary keyword per blog post and scatter it throughout the text naturally. Combining words like “How”, “What” and “Why” with your keyword will make it sound more helpful for users and Google alike.

Ensure your posts are easy to read

You can make readability more convenient for your users by:

• Using short sentences
• Keeping paragraphs concise
• Optimizing images for quicker page loads

This will allow users to quickly scan the text for information they need. Plus, it makes it easier for Google bots to crawl you site for ranking purposes.

Another best practise is to highlight important information by:

• Adding bold text
• Making bulleted points
• Italicizing blocks of text

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that bolding important words in a paragraph can improve SEO.

It’s also useful for ecommerce sites to include links to priority products and category pages on relevant blog posts. Just remember to make it sound natural and not too spammy.

Continue to audit older posts

Do revisit your old blog posts on a regular basis and update or extend them when possible. Google hates inactive dusty sites and will reward sites with fresh new content.

Don’t forget that your blog posts must also include a title tag and meta description. Be sure you include your keywords in the meta data and that it is up-to-date with Google’s standards.

Related: Blog post SEO: Step-by-step guide to writing a search-friendly blog article

7. Optimize images

Images are the second-most popular way to search online. They help users find what they’re looking for and serve as a visual guide in their buying journey.

But if you’re not optimizing your images before uploading, you might be missing out on valuable SEO rankings.

A couple of good ways you can improve SEO using images is so to:

• Include alt text: Alt text (aka image alt or alt attributes) helps search engines understand what the image is about. It also helps with accessibility for users with screen readers and displays when browsers can’t process images correctly.
• Compress images: This helps boost your on-page loading speed and can be done using Photoshop or by using a site like TingPNG before uploading.

Optimizing for both areas will make it easier for Google to crawl and decipher your site. But if you need a little more help with alt text, read the section below.

Key notes for writing alt text

Despite the latest advances in technology, search engine crawlers can’t see images like humans do. They must rely on the accompanying alt text to help them out.

One best practice for alt text is to keep it simple. These descriptions are meant be short and should include 125 characters or less (including spaces). There’s no need for gimmicks or extra filler worlds like “this is an image of …” Simply describe what the image is about in the most direct way possible.

For example, the alt text for the image above could be, “Close up of someone holding a pair of glasses.”

Image optimization made easy

GoDaddy’s Website Builder makes it easy to edit alt text on images. Simply click on an image insider the editor and write your alt text in the box designated for “Image description.”

You can also use GoDaddy’s Website Builder to automatically compress your images, along with any other large files you may have already uploaded.

8. Is your site mobile friendly?

Making your site mobile-friendly is an important factor for Google rankings. It’s a primary reason why mobile-first indexing was created and adds to the overall convenience for users on-the-go.

Users should be able to experience your website on a mobile or tablet device the same way they do on a desktop.

It needs to be easily accessible without needing to pinch or squeeze to view your content.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly tool is a great way to test your website when optimizing for mobile devices. Or if you don’t want to hassle with checking yourself, GoDaddy’s Website Builder has standard built-in mobile responsiveness.

9. Submit your sitemap

A sitemap helps search engines crawl your website and index it faster. It consists of a file that contains all the URLs on your page, plus metadata that shows each one’s importance and the date they were last updated.

If you’re not using GoDaddy or a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, you’ll need to create one using a tool like XML sitemap generator.

Submitting your sitemap to Google is the last step in this process. You can do this by logging into your Google Search Console (GSC) account and entering it in the “Sitemaps” tab in the side bar.

Backlinko has a great step-by-step guide if you need extra help importing your sitemap link into your account.

10. Experiment with backlinking

Sometimes other websites will link to your site when they want to refer to you as a source of information. This is considered backlinking and it helps boost your authority when Google notices they are coming from relevant and reputable websites.

Another tactic is to partner with other websites in your industry and guest blog on their site. This allows you to share your expertise with similar audiences so that you can backlink and gain new leads.

It also helps to include links to other relevant blogs on your site whenever you find valuable information you can share with your audience.

Additionally, Google and major search engines consider a backlink from a site you don’t own as a vote for your business. Numerous studies suggest that backlinks from quality websites can help increase a site’s rankings and traffic.

Related: How to get backlinks to a small business website

11. Local business

Local businesses can make use of additional opportunities in search engines with things like Google My Business (GMB). This allows brick and mortar or service businesses to reach local audiences in the surrounding area through rich search results.

In other words, your business can have a dedicated profile with Google that appears any time someone submits a query for relevant businesses in their area. It typically includes things like:

• Your website’s URL address
• Photos that highlight your business or services
• Customer reviews and more

All of this info can be optimized to improve SEO and there are plenty of other distinct things to do to increase website’s traffic locally. You can find more information about local SEO with this handy guide from our blog.

12. Measure your success

Google Analytics (GA) is a free tool for monitoring website traffic from any source. Many digital marketers use it to collect insight on:

• Target audiences
• Website performance
• Ad campaigns

However, it can be a bit intimidating if you’ve never used it before. GA contains a wide variety of reports and data that take time learning how to navigate.

It can also be a challenge to set it up, since it requires a bit of coding knowledge to get started.

To make things easier, GoDaddy’s Website Builder integrates with Google Search Console to track search engine performance for you. It also provides technical SEO suggestions to help improve your website.

Most plans for GoDaddy’s Website Builder also include a simplified window inside the platform for essential organic performance. This makes is so there’s no need to log in anywhere else until you’re ready for more advanced steps. It’s a great launching point for beginners interested in learning more about GA.

Check out Google Analytics’ Analytics Academy playlist for more information.

Final takeaways

If you want to have a competitive edge in today’s online marketplace, you need to ensure your business is ranking on search engines. The best way to do that is to improve SEO on your site, so that search bots can crawl it and easily determine what your site is about.

The more SEO-friendly your site is, the higher it’ll rank in search queries.

Users with GoDaddy’s Website Builder have the upper hand since it includes built-in benefits like:

• Standardized mobile optimization
• Automatic XML sitemaps that don’t need to be maintained
• SSL certificate with HTTPS for data encryption
• Access to Google Search Console

You also get the added benefit of 24/7 support in case you need extra help determining your next move. And you can even opt for additional plans (like GoDaddy’s SEO Services) to help boost your online presence even more.

Remember, improving SEO for your site is all about time and dedication. Now’s the time to jump in and capitalize on opportune moments that get your business noticed online.

Want to know how to stand out on Google? Many small business owners think it’s as simple as having a well-written ad.

It’s not.

To beat competitors on Google Search, you need to leverage SEO best practices across three pillars of a strong digital marketing strategy — your website, YouTube channel and Google Business Profile. Making the most of these marketing channels and the wide range of tools that Google offers small business owners can help you show up on Google and win more search traffic.

How does Google work?

Before we even look under the hood to figure out how Google works, please understand that there is no quick fix to “get your business to the top of Google.” In fact, if anyone ever tells you that they can get you to the top of the search results page, hang up the phone or press the spam button because there’s not a single individual with that superpower.

Google owns 92% of the search market share because of its algorithm, which helps it decide whether to show your business or a competitor to potential customers searching online. The complex algorithm works constantly to sift and sort through billions of websites and online resources, ranking them based on topic, relevance, prominence and performance. Google’s algorithm considers hundreds of ranking factors (also known as signals) to determine your business’s worthiness of showing up. Ranking factors can include:

• Age of your domain (e.g., com)
• Presence of relevant keywords throughout your web pages
• Creation of useful, original content
• Use of structured data
• Mobile-responsive design and more

At last count, SEO experts estimated that Google’s algorithm considers over 200 ranking factors, but this number can fluctuate each time Google updates the algorithm. Because Google is so tight-lipped about its proprietary algorithm, no one truly knows which ranking factors make the greatest impact, but there are some best practices you can follow to increase your chances of standing out on Google.

5 best practices to make your website stand out on Google

We can all agree that getting your website to show up higher on Google’s SERP (search engine results page) is important to win new business. According to Google, over half of online shoppers plan to use Google to research a purchase before they buy, so the higher your website ranks in relevant searches, the better your chance of attracting customers over a lower-ranking competitor.

As a Dedicated Trainer for Grow with Google, I teach a class dedicated to making your website work for you. In the class, I highlight several characteristics of a search-friendly website:

1. Fast load time.
2. Useful, original content.
3. Keyword strategy.
4. Mobile-responsive design.
5. Secure experience.

Let’s take a closer look at how to show up on Google by putting these SEO tactics to work on your small business website.

1. Fast load time

How do you feel when you click on a link, and it seems like the website takes forever to load? If you’re like most consumers, you close the tab and continue your search after just a few seconds. Google strongly considers a website’s load time, especially for smartphones and tablets. In fact, a study commissioned by Google found that faster load times led to reduced bounce rates and higher conversion rates because fast-loading websites create a more enjoyable user experience.

2. Useful, original content

The content on your business’s website — including text, images and videos — plays a vital role in helping your business show up on Google Search results for queries related to the products or services you offer. That’s because, as mentioned above, useful, original content is among the ranking factors Google considers for its SERPs.

To beat competitors on Google Search, make sure your website’s content is as helpful and unique as your business. (While you can find inspiration from your competitors’ website content, copying such content onto your site can actually hurt your chances of showing up on Google.)

Keep your website up-to-date with a mix of content that might include:

• Educational blog posts related to your area of expertise (e.g., “How to make the perfect hard-boiled egg” if you’re a personal chef)
• Behind-the-scenes videos that show your business in action (e.g., prepping ingredients for a catering gig)
• Lots of photos of your products and services
• Beefy product/services descriptions that make clear your edge over the competition
• Testimonials from satisfied customers

You might schedule an hour or two per week to freshen up the content on your website — an investment that likely could pay off on Google Search.

Related: How to create search-friendly content for each stage of the consumer journey

3. Keyword strategy

In a recent post, I covered an easy-to-follow process for researching keywords because they are still instrumental in your ability to show up on Google Search.

After you go through the keyword research process, decide on the main keyword for each page of your website. Use that keyword in your page title, page description, page content, and the page’s URL slug.

Pro tip: Increase your chances of showing up on Google Search by using unique page titles and descriptions for each page of your website.

4. Mobile-responsive design

Google stresses the importance of designing your site in a way that works with all devices and browsers because more than 54% of all internet activity occurs on smartphones and tablets. If your mobile users have trouble using your website, they’ll probably exit before making a purchase or scheduling an appointment, and they most likely won’t return.

Fortunately, most website builders (including GoDaddy websites) understand the importance of mobile-friendly websites, so if you’ve built your website recently or are just getting started, your site should work well with mobile consumers.

Pro tip: If you want to create a mobile-friendly website experience, be sure to test as you build. Open the website on your smartphone or tablet and click around, making note of improvements you can make.

5. Secure experience

When you are “online” and visiting a web page, the web browser you use is constantly communicating with a web server. As information travels back and forth between the server and your browser, hackers can potentially intercept it. No one wants to be hacked, which is why Google places emphasis on securing your website.

The next time you venture onto a website, see if you notice a padlock symbol to the left of the address bar. Or you may see that the website address starts with “https.” Both of these indicate that the website is secure, and Google appreciates that.

To secure your website, you need an SSL certificate. Secure socket layer (or SSL for short) is a technology that encrypts data by making the connection between your browser and the web server secure. Whether someone is filling out a simple contact form, scheduling an appointment, or buying a product on your website, SSL protects their information.

Editor’s note: GoDaddy’s Websites + Marketing solution (including for ecommerce) includes SSL.

How to stand out with a Google Business Profile

If you are a local business with a physical storefront or a service area, you need a Google Business Profile to help you show up on Google Search. A recent study found that a typical business receives 59 actions from its Google Business Profile. Those actions can include visiting your website, getting directions, or perusing your album of photos and videos to get a better idea of your business.

The name of the game is to optimize your Google Business Profile to increase your chances of standing out from your competition.

Because consumers are now trained to look at reviews before considering buying from you, you also want to focus on getting more Google customer reviews every month. By collecting new (hopefully positive) reviews, you let consumers know that you provide a quality experience, and you signal to Google that your business deserves to be shown higher in the search results.

How to show up on Google Search with YouTube

In addition to a search-friendly small business website and a robust Google Business Profile, maintaining an active YouTube channel for your business can help you show up on Google Search ahead of your competitors. Why?

1. Google owns YouTube.
2. YouTube is the second most trafficked website in the world.
3. YouTube is the No. 2 search engine behind Google.

Because YouTube is such an integral part of the Google ecosystem, it makes sense that video content uploaded to YouTube would also show up in Google Search if you optimize your videos properly. In fact, I’ve been able to optimize some of my videos so well that my content shows up at the top of the search results.

For instance, after performing some keyword research, I created this video about “finding the Google My Business login.” It’s not only become one of our top videos on the Bigger Better Biz YouTube Channel (driving new views and subscribers each month) but it’s helped us stand out from competitors on Google Search as an expert in managing and optimizing Google Business Profiles.

Related: How to make money on YouTube — The expert guide

Putting it all together

You started out wanting to know how to stand out on Google Search, and I’m hoping this article has given you some ideas and inspiration to accomplish your goal. Although there are hundreds of ranking factors that play into your ability to show up on Google, these tips for optimizing your website, Google Business Profile and YouTube channel can give you an edge over your competition.

Remember that SEO doesn’t just happen, and your placement at the top of the SERP is not guaranteed. Be patient, build your solid digital foundation, and stay tuned for more tips and tricks to build your bigger, better small business.

Consumers nowadays rely on search engines to find everything they may need, from restaurant picks to e-commerce platforms and more. This means that whatever your business offers, your target market is most certainly using search engines like Google to find products or services similar to yours.

This is where SEO comes in handy; it is a strategy that helps you gain more organic search results, which is often the main source of website traffic. A good SEO agency can help your business gain more organic reach. The following are just some ways SEO can help improve your online presence and increase your search rankings.

SEO Boosts Organic Reach

The performance of most businesses’ websites is heavily reliant on organic search, which is a crucial component of the buyer funnel and eventually encourages visitors to complete a purchase or interaction. Google holds a much higher share of the search industry than competitors such as Yahoo, Bing, and a slew of others, as marketers are well aware.

However, this does not mean that the other search engines are irrelevant to your brand’s visibility. It is just that Google holds a considerable part of the overall search market. It is, however, a clear-cut leader, and as such, SEO must follow its rules.

A brand’s reputation as a trustworthy resource by Google and other search engines will always be beneficial. Brands can get there with quality SEO and a great website.

SEO Establishes Credibility and Trust

Due to the trust and credibility of the brand’s digital properties, any professional SEO’s goal is to lay a solid foundation for an excellent website with a clean, practical user experience that is easily discoverable in search engines. 

There are a lot of factors to consider upon building trust and credibility in search engines such as Google. For example, natural links, positive user behaviour, machine-learning signals, and optimised on-page elements and content are factors that gain trust and credibility.

Building your brand as an authority will not happen overnight. It takes patience, effort, and commitment and relies on offering a valuable, quality product or service that enables customers to trust.

Good SEO Translates to Better User Experience

While everyone wants better organic reach, rankings, and maximum visibility, only a few realise that an optimal user experience is a big part of achieving them.

Google already learned how to interpret favourable or disliked user experience, so the more significant the positive user experience responses are, the greater its success.

Google’s growing role as an answer engine, providing sought-after data immediately on the SERPs, is a clear example of how to create a good user experience. The intention is to give users the information they need and are looking for quickly and easily in just a few clicks.

Quality SEO integrates a positive user experience, making it work in your brand’s favour.

Local SEO Improves Engagement, Traffic & Conversion

Now that mobile traffic dominates search engines, improving your local SEO has become a fundamental part of small and medium-sized businesses’ triumph.

Local SEO’s objective is to optimise your digital properties for a specific area, so people who want to make a transaction will find you more accessible and faster. Local optimisation focuses on particular areas such as neighbourhoods, towns, cities, and regions to establish a medium for your brand’s communication on a local level.

SEO is a Long-Term Strategy

SEO can have a notable influence within the first year of taking action, and many of those activities will have a long-term impact. It helps you build long-term equity for your brand, plus a good ranking that helps elevate your brand’s profile in a favourable placement.

As the market evolves, SEO also updates to follow the trends and changes closely. An SEO agency will be there to help you boost your PR and provide a long term strategy that will keep your website in a favorable organic ranking. This will, in turn, improve your business by generating more customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) offers an excellent opportunity to make money online. When done well, SEO can be a good source of passive or recurring income.

However, like any other business, starting an SEO business can be overwhelming, especially if you lack the right skills. Luckily, you have come to this post. Here we look at how you can develop a recurring income stream as an SEO expert.

Let’s get started!

Why SEO is a great way to make income

People looking to make money online have many options. Some popular ways to make money online include creating and growing an engaging website, building an e-commerce store, selling online courses, selling affiliate products and services, selling eBooks, etc.

However, starting any of these businesses is only the beginning—you need to attract traffic and generate leads to make money. This is where SEO comes in.

That said, you can make good revenue if you set up SEO as a service. The best thing about an SEO business is that it can be a great source of recurring revenue. After all, businesses require SEO services consistently to maintain their rankings on search engines and make sales.

Back to our question: Is SEO a great way to make income online? Yes, you can earn good revenue by setting SEO as a service. Types of SEO that can help make passive or recurring income include:

• Affiliate SEO – Affiliate SEO involves optimizing an affiliate website for SEO to increase traffic, generate leads, and make sales
• Client SEO – Client SEO involves providing SEO services to businesses and getting paid for them
• LeadGen SEO – LeadGen SEO involves improving a website’s ranking for individual web pages in search results (SERPs) to increase leads and revenue
• Rank and Rent SEO – The rank-and-rent model involves building a website, improving its rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs), and later renting it out

Steps to setting up SEO as a service

Here’s a practical guide to help set up your SEO service successfully:

Educate yourself on standard SEO practices

The first step to building a good SEO service is to learn SEO. People who skip this step end up with a half-baked venture and many unhappy clients. As such, you must take your time to learn SEO in detail before you set up your SEO business.

Some of the things to remember when learning SEO include:

• The goal of SEO
• Keyword research
• On-page and off-page optimization (know the difference)
• Identify user experience (UX) signals
• Creating SEO-friendly content
• Generating trusted, quality backlinks

The best part is that there are many online resources to help understand SEO best practices. Also, you don’t have to master everything to start offering SEO services. Once you understand the basics, you can start offering the services on your way to becoming an expert.

Create a website showcasing your service options

Learning SEO guides is only the beginning; you need hands-on experience. And what better way to gain SEO experience than try it on your own website? Ideally, creating your website allows you to apply what you’ve learned instead of using your clients’ websites as a testing ground.

Your business website need not be complicated—a simple but attractive website will do the trick. Also, create and post SEO content on your website to address common customer pain points.

Adding testimonials to your website is also an excellent way to showcase your expertise. However, it is unlikely you’ll have them if your business is new, so don’t let that stand in your way. Use tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics to analyze the results of your new site.

Outsource or in-house?

When creating your SEO service, you have two options: Building a team of in-house experts or working with established SEO experts outside your organization. Building an in-house team means establishing your expertise and training other staff members on matters of SEO. On the other hand, you can outsource the work to SEO experts.

Project management

SEO isn’t a one-off project. That means you need to continuously optimize your work to maintain rankings. To achieve this, you need to learn project management skills to manage tasks and your team.

Project management involves two crucial categories: Planning and fulfillment.

Planning

Planning forms the foundation of your SEO service. It involves research, evaluation, and strategy. In other words, planning helps get a clear direction of how to build your SEO campaigns.

Some of the critical things to include in your planning include competitive analysis, keyword research, content evaluation, and website audit.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment involves plan execution. More specifically, fulfillment involves implementing a well-thought strategy to get the most out of your SEO efforts. This can be delivering what you promised to clients or getting more revenue from your SEO business.

Some important tools to help in SEO project management include:

• Slack
• Basecamp
• Teamwork
• Asana
• Zapier

Find the right SEO tools

Now find a set of SEO tools to help in the process. Luckily, there are free tools to help streamline your workflow and get more time to do other important tasks.

These tools include:

• Google Search Console – helps understand how crawlers are navigating your site and which keywords could help drive more organic traffic
• Google Analytics – helps analyze site performance and traffic sources
• Google my Business – feeds Google with crucial information like physical location, operating hours, and phone number

Other tools you may want to include in your arsenal include:

How the Hub can help you manage your projects

The Hub by GoDaddy Pro collects an array of pro-level tools in one intuitive and easy-to-use dashboard. It’s an integrated site-, client- and project-management platform that allows you to streamline otherwise time-consuming tasks.

For example, The Hub lets you run bulk updates for numerous websites at once. Users report saving an average of three hours each month for every client website they manage with The Hub. The platform also allows easier client collaboration via shared shopping features and account delegation.

Create your pricing model

There’s nothing as embarrassing as when prospects ask how much your SEO costs but can’t provide a good answer. While there’s not a single answer to this question, knowing the value of SEO will help give your prospects a more convincing answer.

To avoid confusion regarding pricing, we recommend you think about your pricing structure in the development stages. That said, here are three common pricing structures for SEO companies:

• Fixed: You may want to use this pricing structure in projects that involve various SEO work—keyword research, SEO consulting services, on-page optimization, web design services, etc.
• Hourly: This pricing structure is ideal for simple tasks such as website audits and keyword research
• Retainer: Once you’re established, you can put your clients on a retainer basis, depending on their budgets

SEO pricing goes beyond the SEO service cost; it presents your capability and the value your SEO services provide to clients. Research your competitors and prospects before quoting a price for your SEO services.

Market your SEO services

No one will trust your SEO services if you don’t have a robust digital presence. That’s why you need to improve your website SEO to show clients that you are good at what you say.

However, SEO is not the only way to market your SEO services. That said, here are ways to boost your online presence:

Inbound practices

Inbound marketing is a great way to improve your online presence and attract SEO clients. Inbound practices involve different strategies that can help attract leads, including SEO, content marketing, social media, etc.

Automated social media

Businesses spend significant hours on social media per week. As such, you can ramp up your inbound efforts using social media. However, when using social media for your inbound services, you need to:

• Create your message according to user intent and the platform
• Join related social media groups such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit groups to get ideas of what your audience is talking about
• Be human

Reviews

If you have great reviews, include them on your website for your prospects to see. Create great relationships with professionals and ask them to review your SEO company. Positive reviews will show that you’re reliable and adhere to great work ethics.

Relevant listings

Setting up your SEO service on Google My Business, Yelp, and other relevant listings can help improve your online presence. However, make sure that your business information is consistent across these sites, including your business name, address, and phone number.

Document everything

Testing systems is one thing; make sure you document all your findings. Consider gathering positive reviews and creating case studies that will help showcase your SEO services. Always make a list of your clients’ goals anytime you sign up a new client and document their progress. Some of the crucial things to conclude in your case study include:

• The problem – what problem did the client want to be solved?
• The solution – what solution did you propose?
• The results – did the solution you offered provide the desired results?
• Testimonials – what’s the client’s experience working with you?

Scale your SEO business

Building a profitable SEO business won’t happen overnight. It requires a lot of time, effort, dedication, and testing various processes. As such, you may want to wait until when your business is generating significant income before scaling your business.

Of course, you can hire freelancers in your early stages, especially when things start gaining momentum. However, don’t hire full-time employees until when the business has enough revenue to sustain them.

That said, we recommend standardizing your offering or productizing your services if you want to scale your business. This way, it’ll become easier to deliver services to clients and hire more staff.

Wrapping up

Like any other business, starting an SEO business can be overwhelming and confusing. However, if you are willing to learn and do the hard work, you can create a successful SEO business that will give recurring income.

While there are many ways to build a successful SEO business, the above steps will help set up a successful SEO service.