How to Make Sure You’re Getting the Right Returns on Your SEO Strategies?

Introduction

All businesses want to maximize their visibility without overspending on advertising. But even though this might not seem reasonable, the reality is that higher search engine rankings that point to branded web pages can deliver a continuous stream of free organic brand traffic. However, knowing how to master various SEO techniques requires more than just patience and a healthy marketing budget. SEO can be a powerful tool for helping to improve online visibility, but it can require a certain amount of experience to navigate, especially if you’re trying to get the right returns on your SEO strategies and for the time and resources you put into it.

Unfortunately, many businesses fall short in this area, putting too much energy into areas that offer very little returns or can even hurt their chances of achieving positive results.

To help you avoid putting all your eggs into one basket or spending more on your SEO efforts than you need to, we’ve helped to create some simple SEO techniques you can follow that are based entirely on where your web pages are currently ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages.)

What You Should Do When You Have No Rankings?

Launching a new website can be a great marketing lever for businesses to use, but getting additional eyes on it can often be a challenge.

While seeing immediate traffic on a brand-new website is fairly unlikely, there are  certain steps you can take to increase your site’s chances of being discovered:

1. Focus on Your Keyword Targets

Your first step for starting to move the needle if you have a new website or if your older content pages aren’t ranking at all is to remap your keyword targets. This is important for helping you target terms and phrases that aren’t overly generic or impractical in your SEO strategy.

A great way to approach this activity is to invest in various paid or free online tools that help you research the searchability and, most importantly, the “rankability” of keywords.

These tools can help you to have a better understanding of how often certain terms are used each month, in addition to their difficulty rating when trying to rank them against current competitor listings.

2. Start Planning Out a Content Calendar

When developing website content, you’ll want to prioritize high-quality, original material. Search engines are actively looking for unique and informative content to provide to their users, and becoming a known source for it only helps you in the long run.

To manage this effectively, however, you should avoid using generative AI tools designed to help you create content as quickly as possible. Instead, focus on quality rather than quantity, and ensure that all content you publish on your site is well-researched and structured.

3. Spend Time Optimizing Your Pages

After identifying your target keywords, you should dedicate time to modifying various on-page elements on your website to align with them.

Part of this process is to ensure that the title tags and meta descriptions for each page on your site incorporate your target keywords whenever appropriate. You’ll also want to make sure the structure of your content makes sense for the context in which it’s written to avoid confusing readers or search engine crawlers.

A good way to achieve this is to incorporate a table of contents into your posts and make sure you’re using header tags.

Steps to Take When You Start to See Traction on SERPs

It can be really exciting to see your website starting to show up on the first few pages of search results. Sometimes, this doesn’t take much more effort than simply waiting for your website to index properly.

But regardless of how you got there, getting to these initial pages also means you’re facing tougher competition since many websites also vie for those coveted top spots.

To outperform the competition, you’ll need to adjust your approach and implement targeted SEO strategies to improve your website’s position.

1. Reach Out to Authority Websites and Blogs

Generating high-quality backlinks is an important aspect of improving your search engine rankings. Backlinks are links from external websites that essentially act like endorsements for your brand and the relevance of your content.

You should plan and execute targeted campaigns to connect with influential websites within your industry. This can be achieved by offering to contribute valuable content to their site in exchange for a backlink to your own.

This approach can be a great way to build your own website’s authority and visibility while also helping you form long-term strategic marketing relationships.

When done right, the articles and other digital assets you create can increase the number of visitors to your website. Additional referral links on websites or even through your social media feeds can help you improve your search engine rankings.

Promoting your content across different platforms, contributing to online discussion groups relevant to your industry, or reaching out to different organizations are also great ways to contribute to different audiences and improve your overall visibility.

2. Make Improvements to Your UX

User experience (UX) is another crucial aspect of web design that can impact both user satisfaction and your search engine rankings. While an aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly website is important, there are additional steps you can take to benefit your site’s UX.

For example, it’s important to evaluate your website’s performance, particularly on mobile devices, and make sure it creates the right experience regardless of how users access the site.

This, along with your website’s overall speed and navigation, is a key element in designing a website that reduces bounce rates and increases engagement across all pages.

How to Increase the Likelihood of Staying on the First Page?

Achieving a high search engine ranking is a significant achievement. However, the true difficulty often lies in sustaining that position. Search engine algorithms are in constant flux, so it’s not unusual for websites to see fluctuations in their rankings.

Fortunately, there are important strategies you can employ to help preserve your hard-won top rankings:

• Stay Consistent – Google regularly looks for evidence that a website is actively engaging its audience. Having a steady rhythm of site updates and newly published content signals ongoing relevance and helps preserve your rankings over the long haul.
• Work on Your Brand Credibility – Actively engaging across different social media platforms and implementing various brand-building strategies will help to improve your authority on search engines. Indicators like online mentions and customer reviews, when accumulated over time, play a significant role in improving your rankings and web traffic.
• Track and Improve Your Efforts Over Time – It’s important to regularly measure and evaluate your SEO performance over time to understand what’s effective and what areas could benefit from some improvements.

Get Better Results From Your Efforts

To get the most out of your SEO efforts, it’s important to put your time and resources into the right places.

By understanding the factors discussed, you’ll be able to create a more targeted approach to SEO that will help you steadily climb the SERPs and bring you the web traffic you need to help your business grow.