SEO can help you get more visitors on your site, and proper website optimization can help boost your conversions. But you can’t achieve either of these goals without first having a plan to get there.
You Can’t Just Want to Succeed – You Need a Plan to Get There
SEO isn’t a magic wand. It’s a tool that you can utilize to get more visitors to your site. You still have to know what to do once they get there.
- Create conversion optimization goals
- Track your traffic and find out where you can make improvements
- Test page variants to find the best performers
- Work with your SEO team to create realistic strategies
Your SEO team can only do so much without a plan on your part. You need to drive the optimization process, which includes setting appropriate goals. Know which actions are most closely tied to revenue. Test your pages to improve conversion and get people to take revenue-producing actions more often. Track your traffic; find out what works and what doesn’t work. And be prepared to stick to the plan for the long-term to get the results you want.
SEO is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Many issues with SEO campaigns come not with the campaigns themselves, but with misplaced expectations. Far too many small business owners have the expectation that a successful SEO plan can get them to number one in the search engine within a few weeks or even months of work. Ultimately, though, a thorough SEO campaign takes time.
In the old days, websites used questionable strategies to “trick” search engines into ranking them higher. Today, search engines are more sophisticated than ever, and those “tricks” can get your site into trouble – and it can even get you banned. So you’ll need to formulate a long-term plan, and then stick with it, in order to get the results you want without risking serious consequences.
Create Remarkable Content to Make Your Site an Inbound Hub
Making your site an inbound hub is the best way to spread the word about your business. When you’re an inbound hub, your customers can find your product or service when they’re looking for it. It boosts sales potential and increases revenue. At the core of turning your site into an inbound hub is your content. To really boost your site’s appeal and create an inbound masterpiece, you need to focus on creating remarkable content that stands out.
What is Remarkable Content?
Content marketing has gained a lot of followers in the past few years, but a lot of businesses don’t seem to understand how to use it successfully. Many people seem to think that if they provide content about their product or company, it’s all they need – and customers will flock to them.
This just isn’t true. Remarkable content is the only thing that will turn your site into an inbound hub. Boring, mundane, run-of-the-mill content that your customers could get elsewhere simply isn’t going to transform your site into the inbound powerhouse you want.
So what, exactly, is remarkable content? Well, it’s content that attracts links and generates buzz.
Remarkable content prompts other Web authorities to point to your content and link back to your site. It’s remarkable because people “remark” upon it. Every one of these shout-outs serves a dual purpose: they send customers to your site, and they also signal to Google that your site is worthy of ranking for important keywords. More quality links equal more traffic from relevant sites, and more traffic via search. But they must be quality links – link-buying and link-farming is a quick way to get your site in trouble.
Remarkable content serves a second purpose, too: social sharing. Remarkable content is spread quickly and easily across Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Reddit, Facebook and other social sites. If your content is remarkable, it will spread like wildfire within your market. If it’s mundane or boring, it will hardly get noticed – making the time and money you invest in the content a very poor investment.