June 4, 2020

SEO Strategy: 8 Ways to Beat Your Competitors

A good SEO strategy is not limited to just keywords. A lot of elements are important parts of this strategy. They include:

1. Perform a Search Engine Optimization  Audit

An SEO audit can help you measure your growth over time in SEO rankings. This audit is important so you can know your status.

In order to establish a baseline understanding of the loopholes in your site auditing your site is an important element in establishing your SEO strategies.  

An audit can give you enough information on your SEO standings.

It includes:

  • Whether or not your website design is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and reliable
  • If there are any issues that are causing your site to load slowly

It can also help you verify:

  • Whether or not your links are functioning correctly and sending users to the right destination site.
  • Your search engine result pages (SERPs) performance for your chosen keywords.
  • Your site content optimization for better conversions.

Consider a site audit to be like a report card on your SEO strategy. Showing you what you are doing well and what areas you can improve on. 

Using this roadmap, you can easily create SEO strategies that will set your business up for success.  

2. Use the Right Keywords

Using the right keyword for SEO is really important. This simply means you should use words and phrases that your potential customers can use to search for your product or service online. 

When you utilize these keywords in your SEO strategies and website content, it easier for your site to be found on search engines.  Your business information may be display on the search results to the searcher.

The keywords to be used for your SEO strategies are determined by the following: 

  • Relevance
  • Demand
  • Competition

You can also use keywords that are optimized for voice search queries. Studies have shown that a large number of people make use of the voice search rather than typing. You must also understand that the way people type and speak differs, therefore, the keywords for voice search vary. 

3. Create Great Content

Without great content and optimized on-page SEO, your strategy is incomplete. All content on your website should contain the keywords that your customers may be searching for. Ensure your content is engaging and captivating.

However, those content must provide value to customers such as:

  • Educating site visitors on different subjects
  • Providing answers to a question they may be asking
  • Proffering solutions to various problems
  • Providing adequate information about a service, product, or event

4. Make it Mobile-Friendly

You must ensure your website is optimized for mobile. This is because the number of smartphone users is increasing on a daily basis. Not optimizing for mobile would be a huge mistake.

Google has made changes to its algorithm to ensure mobile-friendly search results is a priority. 

If your site has quick mobile response times, text formatted to adjust to smaller screens, Images that don’t slow down the responsiveness of your site then it will be seen as mobile-friendly by Google. This would give your website an edge over websites that do not adhere to mobile.

5. Get your SSL Certificate

Customers are usually concerned about your site’s security. This is why they show hesitations to visit an unsecured site. Google and it’s competitors have taken notice of site visitors’ reactions. SERP rankings of sites are being penalized for not taking the necessary actions to ensure that their customers are adequately protected.

SSL (secure sockets layer)  is a must-have for businesses that collect sensitive data online, such as passwords and credit card information.

Benefits of SSL:

  • It makes your site trustworthy.
  • Search engines and customers are aware of the legitimacy of your site.
  • You and your customers would be at peace knowing that information such as passwords is well protected.

6. Use Schema Markups

One of the most effective ways to optimize your website for search engines is through schema markups. This refers to a code installed on your website which enables search engines to find and deliver information to customers through search results.

Schema Markups informs the search engine of what information is the most useful for customers to know and then displays such information directly on the search result.

Imagine having an edge over your competition when your customers are able to see that you have exactly what they need they want right on the SERP. You would save them the stress of having to click on a dozen different web pages to find what they are looking for.

7. SEO-friendly URL’s

Ensure that your URL isn’t too long this can hurt your SERP rating and also discourage potential customers from visiting your site.  There’s a lot of information stored in your URL.

Your URL should be easy to read and the reader should have an idea of what each page contains.

It is a great SEO strategy to put your target keywords into your URL wherever it would be meaningful. When it comes to formatting, ensure the URL is short. Make use of 50-60 characters to pass information to your readers. In order to enhance readability, hyphens are better than underscores when separating words.

8. Track Your Progress

After taking the time to work on your SEO strategy it’s only normal that you track your progress to assess what’s failing and what’s working. A periodical, a consistent progress report is necessary when optimizing your SEO strategies.

There are a number of tools out there that can help you monitor the success of your SEO efforts. These tools help you to:

  • Follow Up on your search engine ranking improvement for various keywords.
  • Monitor web traffic.
  • Compare your web presence with that of your competitors.
  • Show what types of content are thriving so you can continue to develop that content strategy.

Need Help With Search Engine Optimization? We’d Love To Help, Give Us A Call On +230 54729515 ​

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