If you’re serious about improving your business online, then you’ve probably already heard the term Search Engine Optimisation countless times. 

SEO is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website and improve your conversion rates, and yet it’s sometimes one of the least utilised tools by business owners. 

A lot of SEO strategies focus on getting your search ranking to number 1, which is great, but it’s not always the most effective way to give you real conversion rates and sales results you need to succeed.

Being number 1 doesn’t matter if it’s for random keyword searches, and not for the search terms that will bring customers to your door. 

So, what do you need to develop an SEO strategy that will actually help you sell?

Understand & Research Your Keywords

Keywords are the main ingredient for a truly magical SEO plan. However, if you want people to find your website, you need to understand what keywords your target market are using to find your products or services. 

Consumers are shown to most often choose one of the top 5 organic search results, so a high ranking is important, but you want that ranking to be for the right keywords. 

Finding the right targeted keywords can take time, research, and trial and error. You need to dig deep and really think about what your customers would be searching for. Through this research, you should be learning about user interest and intent, so you can build your content surrounding that. 

This keyword research sometimes means thinking creatively about what problem your product or service solves, and getting inside your customers head. What are people searching for in your industry? 

Once you understand this, you can start actually implementing your keywords into your on page and off page SEO. 

Use Your Keywords

Once you understand what keywords are bringing you results, then it’s time to start using them. Your website should be full of the relevant keywords, backed up by good quality, engaging content. 

Many have tried to just spam certain keywords in the hopes to rank higher, but this actually backfires when google or other platforms punish you for it. You need genuine content if you want your SEO to succeed. 

This is why SEO is such an important part of your digital marketing. The way consumers shop has changed, and so many people are searching online, so SEO impacts nearly everything you do

Your keywords need to be on your website, in your content marketing and on your social media.

Match Your Content to Search Intent 

Blog posts are a great way to regularly update the keywords on your website and boost your search engine optimisation. 

You want your blogs to be made to match your customers’ search intent. It’s important to understand whether your client is looking for information like a tutorial or guide, or if they are looking to make a transaction. 

Having blogs that target all kinds of search intent is going to ensure you have a more comprehensive and effective strategy.

If you want to rank for certain keywords, you need to understand why people are searching for those keywords. This way you can create content in a way that will actually help you succeed in driving traffic to your website. 

Titles & Meta Tags

According to Google, your title is an important factor in whether or not someone will click onto your website. You want it to be concise and engaging, so people will click on your page, over someone else who is also high ranking.

You want it to include keywords, without being overly stuffed or awkward sounding. 

Your meta descriptions are another SEO tool where you want to be including your keywords, so that you will rank higher in search engines. 

While these may be small things to begin with, all the small things you do to improve your content and optimisation can make a world of difference. 

Improve User Experience on Your Website

While keywords are one of the biggest factors of SEO, it goes much deeper than that. Making sure that your website is well optimised is going to help improve your search engine rankings. 

Creating the best user experience possible on your website is going to go a long way. If you have good quality content, people will link back to your website, and that will even further boost your SEO. 

Optimising your website includes things such as making sure you have the best page speeds, high quality images, and a user friendly interface. 

All of this is going to help set you up to use SEO to actually convert, however it’s only just the beginning. 

If you want to learn more about the SEO strategies that have brought success to 100s of businesses, you can read more here.