SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of increasing the traffic to your site in terms of quality and quantity through organic search engine results.
Google makes thousands of updates, and Google’s algorithm changes EVERY YEAR. Especially after 2011, everything has changed, and traditional marketing has vanished.
Hundreds of Bloggers are born each month with existing or different ideas and niches. But, not all succeed. They try numerous things to rank better and get organic traffic. Of course, there is no harm in experimenting, but we need to understand what are the priorities and critical factors for Google to get ranking and drive quality traffic.
In this blog, we will discuss the three best weapons for SEO, Step-by-Step.
Pillar-1: Keywords
Keywords are the bridge between what people search and what you provide. Therefore, choosing the right keywords is super important.
If you select inappropriate keywords, then you will find zero traffic or very minimal traffic. It can ruin all your efforts and strategies.
So, the very first step of any content marketing for SEO is to pick the right keywords.
Before moving on to Step-2, let’s figure out the ways with which we can find the most suitable keywords for your niche.
Here, the role of SEO Tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, UberSuggest comes into the picture. If you are a startup or initial blogger, then using UberSuggest or Google Keyword Planner will be cost-effective. These tools are free and user friendly.
Let’s suppose you have an email marketing service agency, and you want to produce educational content for your email marketing campaigns.
So, your focus keyword is “email marketing.” Go to UberSuggest.com and type the keywords.
Now you can see in the overview section, it gives you data on the monthly search volume, SEO difficulty, and Cost Per Click (CPC).
A unique feature of Ubersuggest is, it shares the backlink report of the competitors that help you compete with them and gives you the opportunity to grab their space on Google.
It also suggests you with the best keyword ideas with competition analysis, CPC, and SEO difficulty level.
When you click on the Content ideas section, it will help you by suggesting the content ideas where you can fill the content gap.
By using such tools, you exactly know how to create educational content and how to run campaigns to bring conversion.
For example, let your campaign style be, “How to do email marketing and it’s automation.” In the 2nd campaign, your content is on “Industry Reports on powerful ecosystems and ROI by email Marketing,” and 3rd content is the “case study on email marketing effectiveness about some clients.” Now you are explaining with testimonials about the ways they are making thousands and millions of dollars through email marketing.
If you create content on such keywords and run your campaign with such an informing and educational email series, then you can convert more customers and generate more hot leads.
Hence, do not choose your content keywords on a random basis. You should do in-depth research and analyze the competition and search volume.
Prefer Long-Tail Keywords over Short-Tail Keywords
To beat the competition, you should choose long-tail keywords. From the last 15 years, you must have come across short tail keywords and long-tail keywords.
Since short tail keywords are very competitive, thus, to get rank on such highly competitive keywords is very difficult, and it could be a waste of time. Hence, we can not ignore the positive impact of long-tail keywords.
Thousands of potential users search what they want to read. Long-tail keywords are low-volume keywords, but they help you rank easily on top. These keywords drive a significant amount of traffic on your site. So, take time, analyze, and search for a long-tail keyword properly.
SEMrush, Ahrefs, Serpstat, Moz, UberSuggest, and Google Keyword Planner are the SEO tools you can consider, especially for Keyword research.
Pillar-2: Content:
There is a common saying, “Content is the King in SEO,” and I think most of us must have come across this. It is not a lie. Content is the most critical and key to success.
As per the study of HubSpot, businesses that publish content regularly get 55% more visitors, 350% more traffic, and generate 67% more leads versus those companies that do not publish blog posts. Also, the study of Demand Metric shows, blog posts get 97% more inbound links and 434% increase in the indexed pages.
Even Google has confirmed, “content” is one of Google’s top 3 ranking factors.
While creating content and before publishing it, you need to take care of 3 significant factors:
- Unique and Informational content related to your niche only
- Blog Post Length
- Keyword Optimization
Marketing study shows, only 1% of marketers create content, rest 99% consume it. And creating unique, informing, and regular content is the biggest challenge for marketers.
So, while creating content, make sure it is relevant to your niche, not copied or plagiarized so as to avoid penalties.
Next is the length of your blog post. Before 2011, creating 300-400 words content was enough to rank on Google and impress your audience. But now, it has no meaning though content length varies from industry to industry.
Marketing companies, like us, need comprehensive and informative content. In various studies by LinkedIn, Neil Patel, HubSpot, and Hootsuite, the content between 1500-3000 words performs better on search engines and brings more credibility.
For Travel and Tourism, blog posts between 1200-1500 words are good to go.
For Healthcare, Technology, Social and political news, the blog posts should be from 800-1200 words.
Keyword Optimization is also a crucial factor
At this point, you should have a list of keywords. If your list of keywords isn’t at least 100 keywords per group, go back to step 1 and keep at it.
It is easy to get 100 similar keywords that you can include in your blog post.
Also, Google-likes content with visuals (images/infographics), videos, GIFs, and others. So, you can use it to boost your SEO.
You can optimize your keywords in the URL, Title, H-1 heading, Meta Description, in the first 100 words of your blog post, and conclusion.
Once you are done with content creation and optimize it well, there are few more things that need to be taken care of before publishing your blog post. These are:
- Google prefers short URLs, so keep your URLs short.
- To rank higher, try to include your primary keyword in your headline.
Pillar-3: Domain Authority & Backlinks:
Now, with Keyword Research and Content creation, you win the half battle of SEO.
But the hardest part about SEO is building links. It is a part of Off-Page SEO.
No matter how much on-page SEO you do, you won’t rank well if you don’t build links.
“As per the algorithm of Google, the more you have backlinks on high authority sites, the higher will be your visibility, the higher you receive the traffic, and the more likely you will rank higher.”
Any website can improve ranking, domain rating, and its authority on Google if they have strong backlinks.
But only if there was an easy way to build links. One that didn’t require you to spend money or write tons of content.
Check the step by step simple ways of creating high-quality backlinks:
Guest Posting:
There are many websites that allow you to post on their sites. These websites give you one or more do-follow links and help you in your branding by providing recognition in the bio section.
Search for those websites, reach out to them via email or directly, follow their guidelines strictly, produce high-quality original content, and get backlinks from there.
It is one of the best ways to get top DA links where you can drive traffic, rank better, and build your site’s authority.
You can be a columnist for some leading websites such as Forbes, Medium, Entrepreneur, and the like where you can contribute regularly and drive vast amounts of traffic. It will also boost your site’s Domain Authority.
Prepare Industry Reports:
With the two comprehensive reports on “17 Charts That Show Where Content Marketing Is Heading” and “New Study: What 100 Social Media Followers are Worth”, digital marketer Neil Patel made more than 90,000 backlinks.
So, you can prepare at least two in-depth industry-focused reports in a year and produce thousands (or thousands) of backlinks.
Produce Free Video Content:
Try to produce informing video content and offer your viewers for free. HubSpot generated thousands of high authority backlinks by providing free online courses and certifications. Also, it gives HubSpot a tremendous amount of organic traffic and increases its sales.
Get Social Shares by reaching out to Influencers:
Now, it’s time to utilize your social media kind of stuff. I want to take you on Twitter, where you can search for related keywords to your blog post.
Now click on their profile and get whatever the possible details such as website, email id, or anything which can help you in reaching out to them.
Start emailing them to get more social traction:
The response rate is approximately 30%, with the outreach of 90-100 emails to the influencers.
Once you make it into practice, you will start getting traction on Twitter.
It will also give you greater reach and engagement on your web.
Conclusion:
Keyword research is a super important part of SEO. If you choose it rightly, it can drive massive traffic, which means more leads and conversions.
Content is not just the king but a kingdom. It can make or break any business. Your content defines your brand, feasibility, and helps to build trust in the market. If it is not informing and inspiring, all efforts are worthless.
And the toughest part is your website’s authority. Higher the backlinks, the better you will rank, and the more likely your website will drive traffic and bring sales.
So now, we have discussed all the three pillars of SEO Marketing, and it’s the criticality of keyword research, content, and backlinks.
If any marketer or blogger misses out any one of these pillars, they may lose their traffic, ranking, and, most importantly, sales and ROI.