According to a HubSpot survey, 60% of the marketers vouched for inbound marketing (blog content, SEO, etc.), which brings in the highest-quality leads, and SEO leads alone among these have a 14.6% close rate.
When done correctly, SEO significantly boosts your website’s visibility by presenting your content for relevant user queries on Google or other search engines; this is especially useful for businesses.
As a result, many companies and their marketers are investing in improving their website’s SEO as part of the overall marketing strategy in 2024.
Our guide aims to give you a brief overview of what SEO is and learn how to devise the perfect strategy to improve it.
6-Step SEO Strategy for 2024
Obviously, the first step is to grasp search engine optimization. Once you understand the key components of the SEO umbrella, such as keywords, meta tags, arch engine indexing, and rankings, it’s time to dive into further strategy.
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Website Structure
When creating your website, focus on structure for a user-friendly design that allows search engines to find your content efficiently; this means it should be well-organized with clear hierarchy and effective navigation. Not only does this improve user experience and engagement, but it also benefits SEO efforts.
Implement a site map to help search engines crawl your site better and use descriptive, keyword-centric URLs for your pages. Similarly, choose a responsive design that automatically adjusts the layout of your webpage to fit different screen types, such as smartphones, desktops, or tablets.
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SEO Audit
Before directly optimizing your site, you must identify its current SEO health and what needs to be changed. Conducting an SEO website audit helps you identify areas for improvement while highlighting the strengths.
Sign up for a free or paid SEO audit tool such as Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, etc. After entering the requested details, here’s what you want to look at:
- Technical SEO: How mobile-friendly is your website? How much time it takes to load? Are there crawl errors or broken links?
- Google Keywords/Rankings: Do people find your content easily on Google search? What keywords are your competitors ranking for?
- Content Quality: Is your content backed by expertise, informative, relevant, and engaging to your target audience?
- On-page SEO: Does the content have meta descriptions and title tags with relevant keywords?
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Keyword Research
Keywords used correctly within your content are the building blocks of a good SEO strategy. These keywords cannot be random; they must be relevant to your content and products or services.
Here are some tools you can use for keyword research to help you get started:
- Google Keyword Planner: Once you create a Google Ads account, you’ll have access to this platform. It allows you to research keyword search volumes and the competition.
- Semrush: For more profound insights into your SEO, this tool’s paid option offers features such as keyword research, competitive analysis, site audit, backlink analysis, reporting and analytics, and more.
- Ahrefs: Another highly advanced paid SEO tool with features such as Site Explorer, site structure report, advanced backlinks filters, SERP comparisons, page inspection tool, and more.
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Create Content
High-quality content is king for your SEO strategy to succeed. Gone are the days when Google solely focused on keywords to identify content. In 2024, the priority is on engaging, informative, and trustworthy content that genuinely addresses a user’s search query.
Plus, Google emphasizes EEAT (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) when evaluating a website’s content, making it even more crucial to write honest, relevant content.
Focus on these key areas to ensure you impress Google with your content:
- Create Unique or Better Content: Millions of articles discuss the same thing, and if you have expertise in a specific niche, use that knowledge to create something better or a different take on what already exists on the internet.
- On-page Optimization: Naturally place target keywords in your content, such as the post’s title, URL, title tags, meta tags, image files, and ALT tags, and avoid over-stuffing. Include external and internal links with the content and use multimedia elements like infographics, videos, podcasts, etc., to improve user engagement.
- Add A Hook: Create content that people like linking to. For that, you need to identify specific types of content that do well within your industry, aka “The Hook.” Some examples of such content include original research or data, How-To or Ultimate Guides, Tutorial Videos, expert interviews or opinion-based posts, free digital tools like online calculators, and more.
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Build Links
Apart from a website’s technical setup and content, Google majorly focuses on relevance and authority in terms of search engine rankings. However, backlinks are what improve the popularity and visibility of your content.
When another website mentions your link in its content, it acts as a vote of confidence and points the reader to your website as the source of that specific information. High-quality backlinks are crucial to building your website’s credibility and backlink profile, and the aim is to focus on quality over quantity.
Building natural links is challenging, but with a little patience, strategic thinking, and creativity, you can generate high-authority links that boost your website’s reputation and SEO efforts. The best practices involve creating link-worthy content, guest blogging, broken link building, digital PR, outreach, and being mentioned in industry directories.
Here are some factors that help determine whether a backlink’s quality:
- Referring Domain: The website giving you a backlink must be credible for that link to matter in Google’s eyes. Positive metrics in terms of the website’s legitimacy, traffic, DA and DR, and overall online reputation are indicators of a good quality site.
- Content and Niche Relevance: The backlink’s content and the page it’s placed on must be relevant to each other; not only that, even the statement it’s placed in should have topical relevance or at least a niche crossover.
- Spammy Black-Hat Links: Google penalizes low-quality, spammy backlinks, which are a major red flag and can damage your SEO. Such links are acquired through black-hat techniques like paid links on link farms, PBNs, comment or forum spam, link exchanges, etc.
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Monitor Progress
Using Google Search Console and Google Analytics, you can keep track of all your website’s SEO efforts and how they’re performing, allowing you to monitor progress, find what’s not working out, and fine-tune your strategies to achieve the desired results.
After identifying the areas you can work on, use this to improve your content strategy and give your audience what it wants. Outdated content also doesn’t leave a good impression on readers, so ensure you add necessary updates to make your information relevant to changing times.
Parting Thoughts
Living in these digital times means keeping up with every algorithm and trend to ensure your website’s SEO remains relevant and healthy in the long term. With the steps mentioned above and consistently altering your strategies, you can unleash the power of SEO for your website’s success.