Best Practices for Utilizing SEO
Sharpen Your SEO Strategy and Cut Through All the Noise
Do you know why the SEO crossed the road? It wanted to get hit with traffic. Yes, it is a dumb joke, but in it, there’s a whole lot of truth. Many people know how important SEO is (even if they don’t fully understand how it works), and they are aware of the benefits that SEO will contribute to their website, and hence, to their business.
SEO certainly is the best and most feasible way for you as a Value-Added Reseller to reach out and understand customer behavior. It not only improves the visibility of your website but also enhances organic search results. And by organic, we don’t mean that only hippies and vegans will find you, but Search Engine Results Page (SERP). And therein the traffic pun. You want your website to get hit by relevant traffic, giving you a high SERP placement.
Why SEO is Important
Let’s start by doing away with 2 misconceptions. First, SEO is not a single thing. It is made up of multiple elements—internal links, keywords, backlinks, and meta tags, just to mention a few. SEO is a tool to bring people to your website… period!
Second, the ranking. How to improve SEO ranking means knowing which words to use and which not to use. Knowing what a gap analysis is, how to carry out a competitive analysis, and performing keyword research are crucial steps to optimizing a website. There are many online tools to teach and guide users on how to understand the big picture, including SEO content strategy. Underestimating the value of SEO will cause a web page to not rank. It will be relegated to Google Page 4, where things just go missing, like socks in a dryer (there was a study that showed only 3.99% of search queries went on past Google Page 1).
…a study that showed only 3.99% of search queries went on past Google Page 1.
There are four important reasons why having a strong SEO marketing strategy will pay off:
- It delivers strong data with which your business can take firm action.
- It provides leads and identifies new opportunities more readily.
- It will increase your credibility resulting in more relevant users reaching out to you.
- A strong SEO strategy will improve your chances of landing on Google Page 1.
Best Practices for SEO
- Build effective snippets. Learn about featured snippets (prominently displayed on the SERP) and rich snippets (more relevant information = higher click-through rate) as these can help rank a page higher.
- Keep an eye on the site speed. In Google’s own words: “Two seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.” A slow page load will lower a website’s ranking.
- Lack of mobile usability—even if it’s just a single landing page of the entire website—is another ranking killer. Running a mobile usability report often is a must, so errors can be caught (and fixed) rapidly.
- Don’t underestimate the value of long-tail keywords (longer and more topic-specific keyword phrases). They have a lower search volume and a lower keyword ranking difficulty than the shorter and more common head keywords, but the traffic they do generate will be of customers much closer to completing a purchase.
- Generate backlinks from high-value, authority websites. Third-party credibility goes a long way to promote your business. Since backlinks are a vote of confidence from one site to another, particular attention must be paid to ensure these are not toxic backlinks (low authority, spam sites), which will harm ranking and may even incur penalties from search engines.
- Alt text and alt tags are your best friends. They should be descriptive and should avoid using the site’s focus keywords. Using too many of the site’s keywords in alt tags (or keyword stuffing) may make the website come across as spam.
- Lastly, monitor your competitors. There are websites (a few free ones, but most are reasonably priced) that can help. Check their keywords, domain data, backlinks, social presence, on-page SEO, and site speed, and try to get an idea of their content marketing strategies.
What are Website Analytics and Why Do You Need Them?
If we said, “analytics is the information resulting from the systemic analysis of data or statistics to discover, interpret, and communicate significant patterns in said data,” you’d probably run for the hills to avoid that conversation. But if we said, “by using analytics, package delivery companies have found the best shipping routes, most effective delivery times, the most cost-effective means of transport, and the best customer retention practices,” then you’d be interested in how analytics could apply to you.
Businesses need analytics so they can make informed, data-driven decisions. Business analytics tools determine how data can be leveraged to solve problems, increase efficiency, increase ROI and revenue, and offer better customer service, which leads to more brand loyalty and retention.
Some people do their own business analysis, others retain a firm (or an individual) to do so, and yet, some others will purchase the tools. The cost can be reasonable (some firms will charge a flat subscription fee, as low as $15 a month) while others can go as high as $15,000 a year.
Value-Added Resellers need to understand what brings in customers, retains them, or drives them away, and how to maintain and reach new potential clients.
The following are ways analytics will work for you:
- Analyzing your customers’ behavior patterns, making improvements to your website, and service portfolio, making better and more informed decisions, and enhancing efficiency will lead to a better customer experience. And that equals more loyalty and higher retention rates.
- Studying this data minimizes risks as you are more prone to make the right choices regarding trends, performance, and consumer needs. Analytics answers questions you may have about your clients and prospective customers. It enhances audience targeting.
- Business and data analytics tools will offer an insightful and data-driven look at what is working, what is not, where revenue is being lost, and predict the likelihood of certain results. It can show you if and where to automate. Business analytics will help you become more proactive with less risk.