In the early days of incoming marketing, if you consistently produced decent content and followed a number of basic input principles, you had a good chance of being ranked on search engine result pages (SERP) because not many others used the power of search engine optimization (SEO).
Millions more have since been captured and with the advent of artificial intelligence, machine learning and ever-changing algorithms it is becoming increasingly difficult to be found.
Google tends to answer more and more questions with excerpts and other content delivered directly to SERPs, leading to fewer visitors being directed to your website. So what is an organization that should do when the success of the incoming marketing strategy is largely dependent on the discovery by Google and other search engines? Despite the challenges, there are still SEO best practices and tips that you want to keep in mind for 2019 and later.
Give priority to SEO Quick Wins
Instead of focusing all your efforts on ranking for new keywords, you analyze for which keywords your website already scores the highest and you focus on improving those keywords; you will see faster SEO improvements in this way. View the web pages that perform well and optimize them optimally. Look for opportunities to add value, update statistics and links, add subheads, and format them for the ultimate user experience. You could even expand a short blog post about a production technology, for example in an extensive guide with extensive forms. Improve your content enormously to help increase it to the top of the SERP results.
Analyze the search results for target keywords to gain insight into the types of content that Google typically uses for those keywords. It may not be possible to search for a keyword if Google prefers content that does not match yours. For example, you might want to rank for certain types of factory jobs at your location, but Google is much more likely to rank recruitment sites with those career opportunities.
Your internal link structure is also important. Organize your content into topic clusters to help increase the search signal. In other words, divide individual content articles and blogs into categories and then collect them together via a central pillar page and hyperlink structure to provide a library of sorts that contains more extensive information. Search engines are often in favor of this kind of comprehensive approach and it will increase the overall visibility of the content.
Use Subject Clusters and Competitive Research in the field of Keyword Discovery
There is no set rule for conducting keyword research, but there are some basic methods to discover which your ideal buyers are most likely to type in Google. Some companies place too much emphasis on a single, high-quality keyword (for example, "wire harness"), but pages can also be arranged for multiple keywords and long-tail forms. Many users type or speak to their requests in the form of questions, such as "What is the best way to protect electrical wiring harnesses on heavy equipment against street salt corrosion?"
As mentioned above, it is better to target a larger cluster of keywords instead of single keywords in the form of pillar pages that can provide many answers and keep visitors on your website for longer. Increased time on the page will also help your SERP ranking.
Have you researched the keywords that your competitors use? Your SEO competitors are a gold mine for discovering keywords. Use tools such as MOZ, SEMRush or Ahrefs to discover what the top pages of your competitors are ranking for.
However, remember that your competitors in the market may not be your competitors in the area of SEO. Look at the SERP results to see who your real SEO competition is. For example, an industrial manufacturer can compete for SEO and keywords with a publication intended for industrial technicians looking for answers to questions such as "How to design a feasibility study for plastic parts."
Keep in mind that simpler keywords with a higher search volume have very little value if traffic is primarily visitors that are never qualified as potential leads.
Regularly check and optimize your content for SEO
Because the incoming tactics are constantly evolving, you cannot take an attitude towards forgetting, but with your content. It is crucial to regularly check your content to determine how to optimize it. You can take one of the following four actions:
Key SEO Audit Actions for existing content
1. Hold it. If your content is doing well and generating traffic, do not repair what is not broken. Content that is still relevant to your target audience, has links that come from other high-powered domains, or that does relatively good work in converting traffic, needs few adjustments except the incidental check to ensure that information is still is current, links are still working, etc.
2. Consolidate it. You may have content with links to it, but there is still not much traffic or conversions. Or maybe the subject is not as relevant as it could be for your target audience. Consider combining it with other relevant content to create a larger SEO-friendly version.
3. Improve it. There are two ways to look at content that needs to be improved: what is relevant and has decent traffic is not yet convertible, and content that has a high conversion rate but does not necessarily get a lot of traffic. In both scenarios, look for ways to improve both SERP rankings and CTA conversions by researching keywords, adding content and links, and discovering why visitors drop out before you follow any form of action.
4. Remove it. If you have content that is not performing at a certain level, is hopelessly outdated, or just needs a complete rewrite, it might be best to remove it from your site. For example, because we have thousands of blogs on our own website, we have retired old posts that are no longer relevant or that actually compete with newer, more current sources on the subject. We have been diligent to set up a redirect to the newer article to ensure that if someone stumbles over the old one, they will still find what they need. Old, irrelevant content can stop your website by reducing overall domain management and eating up your crawl budget.
There are more tools than ever for SEO and it can be overwhelming. Even with all these tools and insights, optimizing your content to score on SERP will still take time, discipline and a little manual effort, but it is a must in the current marketing landscape and will certainly be worth it in the long run. . We have developed an SEO Survival Guide that you can view and download and that can help you. Make sure you have access below.