Never stop growing. That’s the best way to describe the world of search engine optimization (SEO). It’s a constant learning process, and there are always new ways to improve your site.
There are a lot of different factors that go into good SEO, so it’s important that you stay on top of all of them by looking for SEO companies. Doing so will help increase traffic to your website, whether you’re interested in generating more leads or making more sales.
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Keyword Research
The first step in any SEO campaign is keyword research. This is where you find what people are searching for, how many people are searching for it, and how difficult it will be to rank for that term.
There are several tools available for doing keyword research, including:
Google AdWords Keyword Planner — this gives you the most accurate search volume data straight from Google (however, it requires an active AdWords campaign)
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Start with an audit
Before you start any kind of optimization, you need a clear picture of where you stand now. This is true even if you’re starting from scratch with a brand-new site and have never done any optimization before. The first step is, in fact, to do a website audit to identify the strong and weak points of your current SEO efforts (or lack thereof).
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Create a plan
Once you understand what needs to be done, create a plan for implementing it and assign tasks to the relevant team members or freelancers. Make sure you stick to this plan as closely as possible — any deviations will cut into your expected returns on investment (ROI). If the plan changes along the way, analyze why and what impact those changes had.
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Keyword research
The first thing you need to do is figure out which keywords your ideal customer uses to find your product or service.
Keyword research is one of the most important parts of SEO. You can’t just pick a random keyword and expect to get found on search engines like Google.
- Researching the right keywords will allow you to:
- Rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs)
- Get more relevant traffic to your website
- Boost conversion rates by getting the right people to your website in the first place
To get started with keyword research, use a tool like Google Keyword Planner. It’s free, and it gives you suggestions based on what you already have on your website (more on that in the next step!).
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Set realistic expectations
Set realistic expectations for your website’s performance. The fact is, you may never rank in the first page of Google for your most competitive keywords or even see a fraction of the traffic you want — especially if your site is new. This can be disheartening, especially for small businesses that are trying to compete with larger companies with more resources.
The truth is, it takes a lot of time and resources to achieve results with search engine optimization (SEO). Organic search results, which are determined by algorithms, aren’t as easy to game as some people would lead you to believe. It’s all too easy for businesses that lack experience with SEO to end up on the losing end of search engine rankings.
