SEO can seem overwhelming to small business owners at first, but it’s an essential component of any good digital marketing strategy. At its core, SEO involves incorporating keywords and phrases into your site’s copy to help it rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing. Plus, you’ll need to focus on content marketing, improving your website’s user experience, and securing backlinks for your website to get the best results.
Essentially, if you want to reach more of your ideal customers, SEO needs to be at the top of your to-do list. This is because it will help you to improve your online visibility so more people land on your website organically. Generally, the more quality traffic you get, the more sales you’ll make, so it’s incredibly beneficial for your bottom line.
So, how can you use SEO to help you reach your ideal clients? Let’s look at five simple solutions to help you increase your sales and boost your ROI.
Incorporate the most relevant keywords into your website copy
One of the most effective ways you can ensure your web pages rank for the right queries is by optimizing your copy with the most relevant keywords. To identify which words you need to use, you’ll have to do some keyword research.
Keyword research is the process of identifying the best keywords for your content based on the needs of your audience and the competitive landscape for those terms. Keyword research tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you understand what people are searching for so you can choose the right terms to include in your content.
When choosing the most appropriate keywords for your copy, you should consider:
- Relevancy: Make sure every keyword you target is incredibly relevant to the web page you’re writing copy for. The more specific and relevant your keywords are, the more qualified the traffic you attract will be.
- Search intent: What are the needs of your target audience and how close are they to making a purchasing decision? Choosing the right keywords based on the intent of your audience will help you reach the right people at the right time.
- Competitiveness: What keywords are your competitors focused on? More competition will make it more difficult to rank on Google and other search engines for specific terms, so be sure to look at how competitive specific phrases are using the keyword research tool that you are using. You want to find the right balance between competitiveness and popularity.
Once you identify the most relevant keywords, you’ll need to optimize your website by placing them in your copy.
Take a look at this example from Wayfair, an online furniture company. This eCommerce furniture store combines high-quality content with a strong keyword strategy to push its outdoor furniture page to the top of the search engine results page (SERPs). They have incorporated relevant keywords with high search volumes into their page copy, which helps them compete with big-box furniture stores in the search results and write their content in a way that sounds natural and approachable for their audience.
Notice how they use keywords like “outdoor furniture” and “patio furniture” in the header of the page to improve their ranking on Google. You can use a similar approach to keyword research and targeting by finding the best keywords with high search volumes and incorporating those terms throughout your content to ensure you reach the right audience through search engines.
Remember to strike a balance between writing content that speaks to search engines and copy that is readable to a human audience. If you lean more towards one side, you could miss out on rankings or clicks.
Give link-building a try
Another way to boost your SEO and reach your ideal clients is through link building. This involves convincing other website owners to link back to your site or landing page.
This is essential for SEO because it boosts your credibility, increases referral traffic, and improves your website’s authority in the eyes of Google. There are different ways you can build links back to your website, such as:
- By guest posting for relevant websites
- By creating resources people will want to link to
- By giving people quotes for their articles
- By doing something newsworthy, so people write about you
- By finding existing online mentions of your brand that links could be added to
You can find link building opportunities by looking for authoritative sites in your industry that accept guest blog posts. Guest posting is a great approach to link building because you can get your content featured on high-quality sites and add links in your author bio or other areas of the piece back to your site to help boost your online rankings.
Just remember that it’s essential that you assess a site’s quality, typically by looking at its Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR), before reaching out for a link. You should also review a site’s content and its rankings to make sure it is relevant to your audience. For example, if you run a car dealership, you don’t want to appear on a site that focuses on sewing since the content won’t be relevant to your target audience.
Focus on ensuring your website provides a great user experience
If your website doesn’t offer a positive user experience, internet users won’t stick around long enough to make a purchase. This can also increase your bounce rate and harm your SEO. There are many things you can do to enhance your website’s user experience, such as by ensuring you have:
- A fast loading speed
- Easy to read text
- All the information visitors will need
- A design that is simple but effective
- An intuitive navigation
Let’s take a look at a company that does a great job of enhancing the user experience of their website to drive sales and build a relationship with their audience. This will help to improve their SEO.
Forever Homes, a custom home building company, has a website that offers a fantastic user experience. Firstly, notice the simple design that loads very fast, so their audience stays engaged and they are not waiting long for the site to display its content.
The homepage also has three large purple buttons with clear directions to guide the user to the next steps. This makes navigating easy and helps visitors find what they are looking for. You can use a similar design for your site to ensure potential customers find the information they need in a fast and efficient manner.
Providing a good user experience will increase your website’s online visibility, as Google will feel more confident about promoting your business to its users. So, take the time to evaluate your site’s user experience to identify any possible snags and correct them immediately.
Create SEO-friendly content your audience wants
Content marketing is the practice of generating high-quality and relevant content to attract users and generate sales. A reputable content writing company such as Grammarly for Business can help with this. Not only does good content improve your credibility and build relationships with your customers, but it also plays a massive role in boosting your SEO strategy.
SEO without content is like a car without wheels. Your content is what you optimize with those essential keywords to help users find your site when looking for information. It also allows you to show that your website is credible by demonstrating your expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). These factors play a significant role in how Google ranks content on the SERPs, so you need to make sure your content is accurate and highlights your knowledge about your field of work.
To identify topics to drive your SEO content marketing strategy, look no further than your target audience. Ask your customer service team which questions are asked frequently. Also, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and imagine what information would help them make a purchase with you. You can also use keyword research to help find topics that you want to rank for since many tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush provide topic idea generators around specific keywords.
You should enhance your page titles and write great meta descriptions using your target keywords, too. And include links to related sites with strong authority, as well as internal links to other relevant areas of your site. This will help Google to crawl your website, as well as help your readers to navigate through different pieces of content they’re interested in.
An excellent example of solid SEO-friendly content comes from RMIT Online, an online platform that offers courses and programs in a number of disciplines. Notice how they have answered a common question that connects with their audience of students, about whether we are facing an oversupply of data scientists. The piece covers a topic that many of their potential students are likely to ask about, and it is optimized with keywords to not only rank high on the SERPs but also to get clicks from their target audience.
They also include links to authoritative sites, like news outlets and government sources, that support the data and observations they have made. This allows their content to enhance their SEO efforts and build credibility and trust.
At Loganix, we are constantly publishing high-quality content that is optimized for both search engines and our target audience. For example, you can check out the local SEO checklist from our team that lists the top things business owners need to do to reach nearby customers through Google.
It offers more than 50 suggestions for improving your SEO, and is sure to appeal to our ideal audience of digital marketing agencies or business owners who want to improve their rankings. We’ve made sure to optimize the piece with popular and relevant keywords, and we rank for our desired queries as a result.
Make a real effort to keep your bounce rate low
Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing just one page. This usually happens when someone lands on your site from the search engine and then clicks the back button to “bounce” back to the search results.
A high bounce rate usually means that something is off with your site and needs to be optimized. The higher the bounce rate, the less engaging your page is likely to be. This also indicates to Google that your content may not be of high quality and internet users probably shouldn’t visit it. This will impact your SEO efforts.
Of course, your bounce rate will naturally differ depending on the type of page someone lands on. For example, it’s natural for a blog post or a landing page to have a higher bounce rate. You’ll want your bounce rate to be between 20% and 44%.
To reduce your bounce rate, try adding interactive elements or sophisticated search features that will help visitors find what they need straight away. Enhancing your video marketing strategy with short-form videos is another great way to capture your visitors’ attention and keep them on your page.
Let’s take a look at one company that gives website visitors a reason to stick around to keep their bounce rate low.
DontPayFull.com helps people to find online discounts, and their Amazon discount finder page is ideally set up to deter people from bouncing. They do a great job of offering a sophisticated search tool that allows users to find what they are looking for quickly.
Visitors can identify the type of discount they are looking for, sort by department and price, and adjust the discount range they are after. This makes it simple for customers to find the discount they are looking for without bouncing to a new site.
Put yourself in the user’s shoes and visit your website from a search engine. Analyze how easy it is for you to find what you need. If you notice it takes too many clicks or scrolls to find what you’re looking for, take steps to fix it. This will enhance your SEO efforts and your rankings on the SERPs.
Summary
The key to running a successful e-commerce business is taking every step to ensure your website reaches the right people.
Pay close attention to your keyword strategy and user experience. SEO may seem complicated at first but, once you get the hang of it, you’ll find more ways to reach your ideal clients. Before long, you’ll see an increase in your web traffic and a boost in your ROI.
Want more helpful business articles? Check out LiveWin’s business section for more insightful articles to help you grow your business and enhance your internet presence.
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Author bio & headshot:
Alex Ratynski is a Content Strategist at Loganix, an SEO fulfillment partner that works with agencies and marketers. The company focuses on helping businesses to improve their online visibility, so they can grow and reach their goals. If you enjoyed this article, visit the Loganix blog for more expert advice.
