When it comes to promoting your website with search engine optimization, you'll hear the most obvious advice just about everywhere you turn. Write about relevant topics. Make sure to include your keywords in your page titles and large text headlines. If you're going to promote your business with search engine optimization, then these rules are table stakes.
But when it comes to turbocharging your search engine optimization strategy, there are a few things that can really push you ahead. Follow these tips and you'll likely take advantage of huge opportunities that your competitors haven't even considered trying yet.
Secret #1: Set Up a Google Plus Account
Seriously. No it's not because all of your customers are already using Google Plus. They probably aren't, even though the budding social network is growing rather quickly. You need to do this because Google is the company behind Google Plus and Google Search.
If you want your website to rank highly in the search engines, you must claim a personal Google Plus profile and begin tying it back into the content on your website. Here's how.
Every time you write a new blog post make sure to link your author bio back to your Google Plus profile. Google will notice the author attribution and will start using the photo associated with your Google Plus profile alongside your pages when they are displayed in the search engine results.
Having an author image beside a page result has been shown to increase clickthroughs from searchers by 150%. There is no better way to get an INSTANT lift in search engine traffic than to increase the rate at which searchers click through to your pages. And adding Google Plus links to your new blog posts is incredibly easy to do.
Secret #2: Let Your Customers Guide Your Content Creation
Everyone knows that creating good content on your website is essential to attracting visitors from search engines and social networks. But the most obvious way to make sure you have a great content is often overlooked.
Great content is content that is really interesting to your most valuable new customers. And the best way to learn what your new customers want to learn about is to ask them. Just a few simple questions can guide your content strategy in amazing ways.
Ask for unanswered questions they have about your business. Ask them to explain your products or services to you in their own words. Ask them why they purchased your products instead of your competitors' products. Ask them what worries them most about their businesses as they look at the next year.
Then get to work. Write new content for your website and online marketing channels that answers these questions and solves your customers' biggest problems. There is no better content strategy than one that is driven from your actual target audience. You can never guess everything they need. So don't guess, ask.
Secret #3: Test Headlines On Your Most Important Pages
Search engine optimization isn't just about attracting visitors to your website. It's about convincing them to stick around after they land on your site. In fact, these two goals are highly tied together.
Google pays attention to how long visitors remain on your website after they send them there. Websites that frequently bounce visitors back to conduct another search in Google are penalized in the search engine results rankings. So you need your visitors to stick around for at least a minute or two if you expect to earn and hold a top position.
Since large text headlines are often the first things people read when they land on a web page, you need to be testing various headlines on the most popular pages on your website. Use a tool like Google Analytics to find pages that visitors reach first, then use a tool like Google Content Experiments to test different large headlines on these pages. Look at how each headline performs over time and pick the headline that convinces visitors to stick around for the longest time.
You'll get more engaged website visitors and higher search engine rankings in result.
Never neglect the basics when it comes to search engine optimization. But if you're already doing the most obvious stuff, follow these three tips and you'll blow your competition away and you'll take top rankings that will deliver your best new customers to your website first for a very long time.
