SEO Strategies You Should Know About
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a continuously evolving field of employment in the context of online marketing. In order to bring one’s own website on the first page for relevant search terms, so-called on-page factors and off-page factors must be implemented, which positively influence the ranking of the page. Google is now much better at identifying good and less good content and thus in most cases manages to play out the search result that gives the searcher good information and is therefore relevant.
1. The right keywords
Keyword research forms the basis for any SEO strategy. In essence, you need to identify the relevant terms that your potential customers use in Google searches to find your products. In addition, you need to think about what questions potential customers are asking themselves regarding the purchase decision. These should also definitely be taken into account as part of the keyword research. In addition to the search volume, which initially contains a quantitative statement about the relevance of keywords, qualitative factors should also play a role in the decision for or against a keyword.
For this purpose, a distinction is made between transaction-driven and information-driven keywords. The former include a direct purchase intention and can therefore be interesting even with relatively low search volumes. Information-driven searches are one step ahead. Here, the customer first wants to obtain information and does not yet have a direct purchase intention. However, these can also be interesting in order to draw potential customers’ attention to the products that solve their problem.
2. Holistic texts
Approach texts holistically. Optimizing for a single keyword is certainly a sensible approach, but Google identifies texts and links searches not only by individual keywords, but also by related terms. Therefore, it makes sense to use related terms in a text and optimize for them. This increases the thematic competence, which Google perceives and takes into account in the ranking. At the same time, one should also create several pages on a domain that deal with related topics.
3. Mobile Optimization
Today, it is important that you adapt your website to modern mobile requirements and make it correspondingly user-friendly. For this purpose, a responsive design is suitable, through which the layout of the website flexibly adapts to the screen size of the end device. This eliminates the need for a second mobile-only website and you only need to maintain your main page.
Optimization for mobile devices is also becoming increasingly important for rankings on Google and Co. and should therefore be considered as a key element of the SEO strategy. Google’s announcement that the mobile index will replace the previous desktop index also underpins the importance of mobile optimization. Google will not first check whether there is also a mobile version for a desktop version, but exactly the other way around. The mobile version is therefore the focus.
4. Technical and content structuring
A structured website is not only user-friendly, but is also ranked positively by Google. Build a clear navigation with no more than seven points. Also, make sure that the structure of the subpages is straightforward.
To prepare the structure of the website for search engines and to facilitate crawling by the Google bot, a sitemap is a good idea. The sitemap is a file in which the individual pages of the website are listed. This makes it easier and faster for the crawler to capture the content of your website. The crawling by the search engine is also influenced with the help of the text file Robots.txt. For example, it is possible to exclude login pages or other protected page areas from the search engine index.
5. Link building
External links to a website are an indicator of relevance and quality for Google. In the SEO strategy, the generation of backlinks should therefore not be missing. It is important to note: Google does not merely evaluate the number of links pointing to your website, but also the link sources themselves. Only high-quality backlinks have a positive effect on the Google ranking. Online PR is a good way to spread your company’s content and generate backlinks. Guest posts on blogs are also great not only for positioning you as a subject matter expert, but also provide an opportunity to link to your website. Make sure that the backlinks come from different link sources so that a natural link structure is simulated.
