What you should know about SEO today

Where is SEO Today?

Are you the provider of a service or product?

Do you have a website?

Have you provided your customers with a proper path to reach your products/services?

Is your SEO where you want it to be?  

Usually the answers to all the above questions is yes…except for the last one. Why isn’t the SEO ever where you want it to be?

According to Forbes magazine, over 80% of customers start their purchase decision with an online search. For your business, this means you need to get your name on top of that result page when the customer starts a search relevant to your industry and the products and services that you are providing. The way to do that is by putting together a SEO (search-engine-optimisation) plan.

But SEO is no longer only about words, it is also about the quality of your content, its reliability, and your trustworthiness.

SEO requires effort, time and patience. Most companies still focus on paid keywords, meta tags and inserting their chosen keywords within their content at the expense of the quality of that content. What few realize is that quality content is the number one tool for higher rankings in searches.

To rank high in the search results organically, that is without having to pay for your position, it is important that you are recognised as a trusted agent for those keywords by the spiders (the name may sound scary, but really they are minions of the search engines sweeping your pages for information and matches for searches). The spiders are looking for you to be trustworthy, to have high quality content that is relevant to the keywords/phrases that were just searched, and to be an authority in your field.

Landing pages are very important, so make sure your searches lead to them. Search engines exist to direct users to relevant and helpful online destinations. When customers input searches relevant to the keywords/phrases you have chosen for your page, you want them to arrive on a landing page on your website – not your homepage! but rather the one that is related to what the customers are searching for. You see, landing on your Home page means they will have to go through the website again in search for what they need with the risk of not finding it, getting frustrated and annoyed in the process and leaving your website never to return.  Their trip to your website would have been a wasted opportunity. Spiders do not like that either.

Finally, bounce back rates are also something to watch out for around rankings in searches. The longer searchers stay on your page, the lower your bounce rate is. A lower bounce rate says your page successfully serves the purpose of the search engine.

So how do you pull them in, and how do you make them stay for longer? And how do you make sure you stand apart from all the other providers aggressively marketing in your space?

Focus on quality content.  Offer information that addresses the customers’ problems, guiding them through their buying journey. Remember, because of searches these days, a potential customer will know everything about you long before you get an inkling of who they are. Show the customers that you understand what they are looking for and that you know how best to help them by pre-empting their questions and providing the answers they will be seeking.

And voilà, you are now a trusted agent for those keywords/phrases to the search engine. Over time, this trust building will result in higher organic ranking for your page.

When they finally make their decision to buy, it is likely that they will choose you.

Saba Consultants specialises in creating quality content that benefits, adds value and is relevant to your target audience. We aim to improve your SEO strategy through extensive keyword research that is incorporated into your content without affecting its authenticity and quality.