Six Tips for Achieving SEO Success

Suddenly, you are responsible for creating your company's new or redesigned website. This effort can come with great rewards and apprehension. Knowing that a website strategy is not just the technology platform or design but also includes the content and optimization of that content (SEO) to help your brand become visible and drive engagement can be daunting. 

Now the project may have lost its appeal. But don't worry, as there are many ways to fill that knowledge gap and ensure the success of your website.

One quick and successful method is to bring an outside contractor to help (ahem Red Panda Marketing can help) organize your goals, strategy, and execution. In the meantime, here is a quick overview of how to build a successful SEO Strategy. 

What is an SEO strategy?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a continuously changing field, and businesses must stay up-to-date with trends to remain competitive. While many companies understand SEO basics, creating a comprehensive SEO strategy for 2023 requires more than simply targeting keywords. An effective SEO strategy should encompass all aspects of content marketing, from keyword research and link building to content creation and website optimization.

When creating an SEO strategy for 2023, it's essential to consider both short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals include increasing organic traffic or improving rankings on specific keywords. In contrast, long-term goals involve establishing your business as an authority in your industry and elevating your brand.

You can create a template that outlines the steps you need to take to reach your business goals. This template should include researching relevant keywords, auditing currently published (ranking or not) content, optimizing existing content, creating new content, building backlinks, and tracking progress over time.

By following this template and regularly monitoring your progress, you can ensure that your SEO strategy is successful in helping you meet your search ranking and traffic goals.

6 Tips for On-Page SEO

Many more keys to a successful SEO strategy will be reviewed in future posts, including keyword research, competitive research, mobile-responsive or -first design, tagging strategy, etc. But if you can nail the below for On-Page SEO, defined as what you do on your website pages to improve rankings you will be well on your way to having a solid SEO strategy. 

1. Build a Content Strategy. How does your content work together? How do the pages on your website support the integrated message and not confuse visitors or the 'machine,' Google? Also, you must write quality content--well-written and relevant to the topic at hand, including relevant keywords. 
   
   
2. URL structure. How are you building your URLs? The content in your URL needs to be succinct (try to stay below 50 characters); include the target head term, and remove all fluff or marketing jargon.
   
   
3. Meta Title and Description. Meta tags are text snippets to describe a page's content; they don't appear on the page itself but only in its code. The description will have less of an impact on how your page ranks, but the title and description will help to tell Google what your page is about. Also, how well your title and description are written will directly impact your click-through rate from Google.
   
   
4. H1-Header. The main title of your page should be short and, minus any marketing jargon to  focus directly on the main idea of your page. This header tells search engines what the page is about. 
   
   
5. Headers (H2 through H6). Tell a supportive and scannable story through the headings on your page. Use semantically similar keywords that support your head term, and do not lose focus as visitors read down the page. A scannable set of headers will help visitors to decide if the content meets their needs and they want to continue reading.
   
   
6. Contextual links. Ensure you are contextually linking to critical pages within your site and off-domain (3rd Party sites) to provide a complete journey for your visitors while showing Google that your page is indeed an authority on a topic.

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