7 Things You Must Know About SEO in 2021

While we col­lec­tive­ly recov­er from 2020, we can all acknowl­edge that the inter­net played a key role in the mas­sive shift in focus for busi­ness­es big and small all over the world. Last year showed us the impor­tance of hav­ing a strong inter­net pres­ence and how essen­tial it is for busi­ness sur­vival. There are many com­po­nents that go into cre­at­ing an opti­mal online pres­ence that will keep your busi­ness on everyone’s radar. One of the most impor­tant includes SEO, also known as search engine optimization. 

What is Search Engine Optimization? 

When the acronym SEO is men­tioned, most peo­ple scratch their heads. That’s because most busi­ness own­ers under­stand that hav­ing an online pres­ence is impor­tant but are unsure of what it entails. It is more than sim­ply set­ting up a sharp web­site and attach­ing social media links. Build­ing an effec­tive online pres­ence requires under­stand­ing the intri­ca­cies of how to dri­ve traf­fic to your web­site so poten­tial cus­tomers will want to buy your prod­uct or ser­vice. That’s where SEO comes in. 

Sim­ply put, SEO is the process of improv­ing the qual­i­ty of your web­site or web page for increased traf­fic from search engines. It is used to gen­er­ate leads and should be includ­ed in your mar­ket­ing cam­paign. There are two types of SEO, including: 

• On page: This type of SEO refers to improve­ments made to the web­site. Exam­ples of this include adding inter­nal links, key­words, and improv­ing your web­site’s speed. 
• Off-page: This type of SEO refers to fac­tors off the web­site that influ­ence traf­fic gen­er­at­ed to your web­site that you have no con­trol over. 

When devel­op­ing an impact­ful mar­ket­ing cam­paign using SEO, there are a few things you should con­sid­er to dri­ve traf­fic to your web­site. You may already be famil­iar with these con­cepts but have not yet imple­ment­ed them. Here’s where to start: 

• Include social media links
• Include and research keywords
• Build inter­nal links and backlinks
• Ana­lyze search engine results
• Devel­op com­pelling con­tent for your tar­get audience

Last year showed us that SEO is now front and cen­ter when it comes to build­ing effec­tive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that reach your tar­get audi­ence. There is no way around focus­ing on improv­ing your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing skills if you want to stay in busi­ness. With online pur­chas­es increas­ing every day, most con­sumers will go to the inter­net to research a com­pa­ny. That means that your SEO qual­i­ty may play a big fac­tor in whether your cus­tomers find you or not. 

Things You Must Know About SEO

• Under­stand­ing search intent — In order to build an appro­pri­ate web­page, you must have a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the intent of the search for your tar­get audi­ence. This infor­ma­tion is crit­i­cal for tai­lor­ing your con­tent and adjust­ments to the search engine traf­fic you’re look­ing for. The key is for your page to be ranked on Google. Quar­an­tine has impact­ed how rank­ing is con­fig­ured since the search intent has to be adjust­ed for the cir­cum­stances. Being aware of changes in search behav­ior can make or break your Google rank­ings. The poten­tial for spe­cif­ic search queries to dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase or sud­den­ly dis­ap­pear overnight is anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty to be mind­ful of. Diver­si­fy­ing your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, you can avoid being sig­nif­i­cant­ly hand­i­capped by these sud­den changes. Using search engine tools to track inter­est and month­ly vol­ume like Moz or SEM­rush will keep you ahead of the curve. Oth­er­wise, you’ll be con­stant­ly play­ing catchup and wast­ing time. As a busi­ness own­er, you can’t afford to waste time! 
• Agili­ty is key — Adap­ta­tion is a key ele­ment of effec­tive SEO and local busi­ness­es have been hit the hard­est dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. For this rea­son, your abil­i­ty to piv­ot and make quick adjust­ments can make a huge dif­fer­ence in cus­tomer reten­tion dur­ing this time. The pan­dem­ic ini­ti­at­ed restric­tions that required busi­ness­es to get cre­ative and agile when offer­ing their prod­ucts and ser­vices. Includ­ing attrib­ut­es that indi­cate online busi­ness hours, online appoint­ment avail­abil­i­ty, and call but­tons on the Google My Busi­ness plat­form have been effec­tive and agile ways of main­tain­ing cus­tomer engagement. 
• Find strength in the SEO com­mu­ni­ty — The SEO com­mu­ni­ty is a close and help­ful group of online pro­fes­sion­als who have come togeth­er to uplift busi­ness­es dur­ing these unusu­al times. In between help­ing each oth­er, we’ve come togeth­er to pro­vide free advice and infor­ma­tion to assist busi­ness­es in mak­ing adjust­ments to their mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to accom­mo­date the online boom. While this is a fre­quent and usu­al occur­rence amongst our group, we’ve dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased our sup­port in light of the pan­dem­ic. We will con­tin­ue to grow and expand in the new year! 
• Stay con­sis­tent — All the SEO tools in the world will not be effec­tive with­out con­sis­ten­cy! Reg­u­lar­ly devel­op­ing engag­ing and qual­i­ty con­tent will help you remain a con­stant pres­ence in search engine results. Anoth­er way to increase your SEO pres­ence is to include high-qual­i­ty back­links into your web­site. Giv­ing cur­rent and poten­tial cus­tomers more val­ue can help increase your rank­ings on Google and that’s always a good thing! 
• Use Google Ana­lyt­ics — Stay informed about how your web­site is per­form­ing through Google Ana­lyt­ics. Almost every mar­ket­ing firm and pro­fes­sion­al uti­lizes this pow­er­ful search engine tool to mon­i­tor demo­graph­ics, user behav­ior, and reten­tion rates. It is a free and excel­lent way to antic­i­pate what users will do on your website. 
• Don’t google your­self - Every SEO mar­ket­ing firm will tell you this but we thought we should reit­er­ate it one more time. Doing so will cause Google to save your infor­ma­tion and pro­vide a false rank­ing at high­er than aver­age. A bet­ter way to achieve the result you’re look­ing for is to use the Incog­ni­to mode on your brows­er. That way, the cook­ies, and cache are deper­son­al­ized giv­ing a more accu­rate pic­ture of what users are see­ing. Some oth­er use­ful tools to iden­ti­fy your Google rank­ings are Moz and Google Web­mas­ter Tools. 
• URL opti­miza­tion is a must — Keep things sim­ple by cre­at­ing an easy to read URL that is search engine friend­ly. When it comes to an SEO friend­ly URL, keep it short, sim­ple and include key­words with hyphens. Specif­i­cal­ly, search engines respond well to URLs that remain between 50 to 60 char­ac­ters, allow­ing users to copy and paste your site quickly. 

Contact Us for Help with Search Engine Optimization

As the foun­da­tion for your web­site, you want to ensure that appro­pri­ate SEO opti­miza­tion is in place so that search engines find you quick­ly and eas­i­ly. Again, a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is not com­plete with­out SEO imple­men­ta­tion. Changes are con­stant­ly being made in SEO and should be main­tained on a reg­u­lar basis. We know that most busi­ness own­ers are busy fill­ing cus­tomer orders and pro­vid­ing ser­vices across the globe. Time is valu­able and you may not have the time to focus on main­tain­ing your SEO strat­e­gy. That’s where we step in! 

With over 25 years of expe­ri­ence in pro­vid­ing inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing solu­tions, we know what it takes to cre­ate a coor­di­nat­ed mar­ket­ing front for your busi­ness. While you focus on your cus­tomers, we remain focused on increas­ing your vis­i­bil­i­ty through a col­lab­o­ra­tive process that includes cut­ting edge strate­gies to get your mes­sage across. After a thor­ough assess­ment and analy­sis of your cur­rent mar­ket­ing infra­struc­ture, we move for­ward with pro­vid­ing appro­pri­ate ser­vices, includ­ing brand­ing, mul­ti­me­dia, web devel­op­ment, and search engine opti­miza­tion. We pro­vide con­tent cre­ation, key­word research, and make SEO rec­om­men­da­tions that will increase your bot­tom line. 

If this sounds like what you are look­ing for, we are ready to help you today. Give us a call for a con­sul­ta­tion today and let’s expand your online pres­ence with excep­tion­al SEO!