10+1 Steps to Better SEO

While there are many ways to disseminate your brand’s message and reach potential customers, B2B marketers continue to cite SEO as their most effective tactic. Among respondents to a survey of Search Engine Journal’s Twitter audience, 49 percent said that organic search yields the highest ROI of any digital marketing channel.

We can vouch for the importance of SEO in our own approach to content marketing: more than 80 percent of our website visits, blog post views and landing page views come from organic search. While social media and email are powerful tools for reaching an audience that has already opted in, strong SEO helps others find us.

That’s why it is essential as you create the content that will be on your website—home page text, services text, blog posts and landing pages for additional gated offers—you take time to consider how to fit what you write to the terms and questions your target audience is likely to be searching.

Check out these 11 tips from Semrush for improving your website’s SEO performance and search rankings.

Want to go a little deeper with “how to” instructions on putting these tips for improved SEO to work?

We’ve covered many of these topics with blog posts and have downloadable resources waiting to help you out:

1. Updating Existing Content: An audit of your existing website (or of your existing marketing content in total) can help you identify parts that should be updated. This means not only addressing the SEO keywords and search terms you are currently targeted, but also looking for other out-of-date information, images or links that may be impacting customer reactions.

2. Aim for Featured Snippets: Writing content so that it directly answers the most frequently asked questions can help your website earn the coveted “snippets” in search engine results.

3. Create Content Based on Keywords: Yes, but also create content that connects with readers, because search engines will penalize copy that is overstuffed with keywords, but reward content that engages readers so they stay on the page longer, click through to other pages in your site or share it.

4. Get Backlinks from Authority Sites: Again, this requires creating content that others will share because it has value. Think beyond keywords to how you answer questions and solve problems for your targeted audience.

5. Optimize Images: Using descriptive file names, alt text and proper sizing (so your page will load quickly) can all improve your webpage’s overall search performance.

As for on-page SEO, we have a template designed precisely to consider each individual element that impacts your webpage’s search performance, from image filenames to metadata and using keyword phrases in page titles, headings and subheads. Download the free template here to use in auditing your current webpages for search optimization or to plan new web content that maximizes search engine performance.

If you are in the beginning stages of a complete website redesign, or just need some extra support to develop the content that will rank high on search engine results pages to drive online lead generation, JONES can help. Schedule a time to chat with our president Kristin Jones about your brand’s website, content and SEO needs.