What is SEO and how does it work?
Search engines crawl your web pages and index them to identify and retrieve them, as result pages for a relevant query. Search engine optimization makes it easier for bots to crawl and index those optimized pages. So these web pages appear on the top of search result pages and attract interested prospects.
Suppose you have a world-class product to offer. But your prospects won't get to know about it magically. Instead, you'll have to ensure that your product reaches your target prospects when they need it. Or, your website pages don't appear on search results when your prospects try to find them online. Search engines start 68% of all online journeys.
Why does SEO optimization matter?
A business can also use paid ads to reach its prospects. But, around 86% of online searchers favor organic search results over paid ads. In addition, the close rate of online searches is higher than outbound marketing channels like cold emails.
This establishes that organic traffic via search engine optimization is the best bet for businesses.
A well-optimized website attracts buyers and helps you build credibility and trust. In addition, it will help you push your prospects further into the funnel with thoughtful and helpful content. In short, SEO can help bring leads and also help those leads convert into buyers.
How to perform SEO optimization on Webflow websites?
As discussed earlier, SEO is crucial for generating online revenue. But the question is, how can you SEO optimize a website for the best results?
The answer: SEO optimization is a complex and time-consuming process. It takes time for bots to index and then rank content. Interestingly, only around 5.67% of published content ranks in the top results. With such stiff competition, it's good to follow tried-and-tested strategies. Moreover, it's an ever-evolving process.
This step-by-step guide will help you perform SEO optimization in 2023 -
- Start by understanding what your users want
Like with any marketing effort, understanding what the users want is a good place to start with. Then, you can use social listening tools, forms, and surveys to gauge what your prospects expect from a brand like you.
Identify your prospect's pain points and challenges. Then, address their problems with your content to gain their attention and build trust.
Write for user intent. The user may be browsing for more information or ready for purchase. Meet them halfway with your content.
- Research competitors
Along with prospects, you need to know what your competitors are doing. You need to analyze -
- What kind of blogs do your competitors push - listicles, how-to, curated content?
- What content is ranking, and what gaps can you fill in?
- What gaps do they have in their content that you can leverage?
- Keyword analysis
When researching, have a look at the top-ranking content of your competitors. And find what keywords they are ranking for.
Focus on keywords that they don’t rank for but have potential to land you higher rankings. Note the location, keyword search volume, and difficulty score of the keyword to shortlist your target keywords. Target keywords must have a large volume but a low difficulty score.
- Topic and content format
Based on keyword research and user intent, draft a content plan. Your content must be a good mix of reviews, listicles, tutorials, and so on. This largely depends on what works in your industry and what your users want.
You can draft a content plan based on core topic clusters that come up in your research phase. Then you can plan your pillar content around those topic clusters and interlink these pieces.
- Valuable, helpful, and original content
According to the latest Google algorithm update, it will prioritize original and helpful content. This change is essential because there's a wave of low-quality AI-generated content that's too generic. You need to write valuable, helpful, and original content - this is how you write SEO content.
Earlier, even the E-A-T guidelines stressed Expertise, Authoritative, and Trustworthiness, i.e., quality content. But it wasn't a ranking signal. But the latest update clearly states that the search engine giant will no longer pass generic and regurgitated content.
- On-Page SEO
For On-Page SEO, build your content with appropriate meta titles and descriptions. Make sure to give logical headings that contain keywords. Optimize images with alt text and use correct URL structures.
You must link your related high-ranking content via internal links to distribute authority to lower-ranking pages. Besides, it helps you guide user navigation on your website and increase dwell time.
- Off-page SEO
Once you have top-quality content, you can ask for external links from relevant brands with high domain authority. This helps search bots understand that your page is authoritative too.
Create valuable press releases and get some high-quality backlinks. Alternatively, create a shareable piece of content like infographics that can gain some backlinks with high topical relevance.
- Technical SEO
Technical SEO includes optimizing your website beyond content. You must give a canonical link element to Google bots to index the original content, not their duplicate versions on your site. Eliminate all print versions and delete the identical versions on CMS.
Create an XML sitemap to guide search engine bots to crawl your essential pages on priority and index them.
Use structured data to describe your content for search engines to understand it better. This tip will help you get featured in rich snippets, Accelerated Mobile Pages, and carousel results on search engine results.
- Focus on website performance
Website performance is an essential ranking factor. Search engines prioritize websites with faster load times along with quality content. Therefore, you must look into quality hosting services and optimize your web pages for performance for Core Web Vitals. You must also ensure that your website is responsive across devices and network speeds. Check out our blog to learn more about website performance optimization.
- Analyze
SEO optimization is competitive. Keep tracking your competition with online tools to be in the know of their recent updates. Similarly, keep an eye on how your content's ranks have improved or fallen.
Google uses around 200 parameters as ranking signals. Therefore, you need actionable insights that can help you refine your SEO strategy as your business and markets evolve.
Fortunately, it's easy to identify issues and fix them with the help of intelligent and automated tools. For example, you can use SEO optimizer like Optomate to analyze your website for issues and implement recommendations to optimize SEO.
- Rinse and repeat
Website SEO optimization is an ongoing process. Eliminate manual efforts. Instead, you can generate reports and automatically send them to concerned people using SEO optimization tools like Optomate. This report can help you check your website's current conditions and chart a fail-proof future strategy.
Conclusion
SEO optimization is vital to gaining the right eyeballs for your business. It helps outrank your competitors, and when you rank higher, you're more likely to be seen as an authority in your industry.
You can nail your SEO with insightful recommendations from Optomate.
