Quite a few factors come into play when growing a successful business. Sales will have to be at optimal levels, employees will have to be productive, and marketing will have to be effective. The last of these can be more challenging to manage, as it often overwhelms many business owners.
The key to this is using a few tried-and-tested marketing techniques that are sure to grow your business. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the more practical and effective marketing strategies you can use. To achieve this, you’ll need to know how to use SEO to grow your business properly.
As complicated as it seems, it can be broken down into a few notable hacks and steps. By following them, you shouldn’t have a problem crafting an SEO strategy that draws in and converts customers, leading to more sales and growing your company.
Seven specific hacks stand out for this.
Using SEO To Grow Your Business
Research Your Keywords
One overlooked factor in SEO is keyword research. While specific search terms might seem obvious, they might not be the right keywords to target. When choosing what you want to rank for, you’ll need to consider multiple factors, such as keyword competition.
The process starts with brainstorming general keyword ideas before using various tools to see how competitive they are. More competition could naturally mean more work is needed to rank well on them. Low competition requires less effort, which could mean a lower search volume. Strive to strike a delicate balance between the two.
Double-Down on Cornerstone Content
Cornerstone content is the foundation of your SEO efforts. It focuses on creating in-depth and comprehensive content based on particular keywords. Think of them as articles that show off your authority in an area while educating readers about specific issues and questions related to your business.
The more comprehensive these are, the more favorably they’ll be looked at by Google and readers. These should link to other posts and pages on your website and related articles on different websites.
Hack For Backlinks
SEO doesn’t work well without high-quality backlinks. These are when other websites link back to your website using a keyword or phrase. Google and other search engines see this as an endorsement from the website to yours. Getting as many high-quality backlinks as possible is a sign of trust in Google’s eyes, so you’ll rank much better.
It also helps you drive natural traffic from these websites, helping you in the short- and long-term. There are several ways to get backlinks, including:
- Guest posting on other websites
- Posting on appropriate directories
- Participating in online communities
Target specific and high-quality websites when you’re developing these backlinks. And, speaking of links, it’s important to ensure all links are working correctly. Using a website link health checker is a great way of strengthening internal links on your site and preventing new users from stumbling onto broken pages.
Prioritize With Google Ads
SEO is excellent at providing long-term results, but it isn’t the best option for short-term solutions. You might not see results for weeks, so it’s worth adding efforts that bring in short-term results while boosting your SEO results. Google Ads is an effective way of doing this.
Aside from driving short-term traffic to your website, you can use Google Ads to prioritize your keywords. If competitors are willing to pay a lot for specific keywords, then they’ll naturally be popular options to target. It could be worth basing many of your SEO efforts around these terms.
Google Featured Snippets
The top results on Google always include featured snippets. These are an expansion on the results, giving readers more information before they decide to click on the link. They often encourage readers to click the link and read through the article. It’s worth researching these to determine what works best for your category.
For example, if each top result has a specific format, it’s worth using the same format in your content. It lets you better optimize your pages and blog posts to rank well on search engines. Do this for each of the keywords you’re targeting.
Boost With Local SEO
When most people talk about SEO, they focus on general categories and areas. Another option to consider focusing on is local SEO. Instead of focusing on keywords related to a general category, this focuses on a category and a specific place. ‘Plumbing’ could be a general area, whereas ‘plumbing in Georgia’ is more detailed and actually helps plumbers in Georgia.
They’ll be more likely to rank well for a local key phrase than the general keyword, making efforts more effective. While this still requires keyword research and similar work, it’s more likely to earn your business higher rankings on search engines.
Limit Your Pages
Quite a few people believe the more pages they have on their website, the more keywords they can target. While it’s easy to see why they believe this, it can hurt your search rankings.
Every website has what’s called a crawl budget. It essentially only gets a certain amount of time and effort put into this by search engines. Too many pages mean you’ll go through this budget without your pages being crawled through and ranked.
By limiting the number of pages, you can avoid this. At the same time, make sure these pages are perfectly optimized and high-quality to ensure the best results possible.
Using SEO To Grow Your Business: Wrapping Up
Figuring out how to use SEO to grow your business can seem complicated and overwhelming. While you’ll need to know how to do it correctly, that doesn’t need to be complicated. Instead, it’s a matter of using a few hacks.
Doing keyword research, doubling down on backlinks, limiting your pages, and the other hacks mentioned above are all great strategies. They’ll not only help improve your SEO efforts, but you’ll see better results in time. It’s a strategy that keeps giving back, so there’s no reason not to ensure you do it well.
Carolyn R. Owens is an ICF-certified Master Coach and serves as a Career Strategist, Executive, Leadership, and Mentor Coach. She can assist you by helping you up-level your skills to up-level your income, career, business, or life. Carolyn provides one-on-one and group coaching, organizational training, and personality assessments. She is certified to give the Energy Leadership Index and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment. You can learn more about assessments and other products and services at https://infinitycoaching.net.
