In today’s world, everyone is constantly searching for information online, and the popularity of Social Media greatly influences the way people find what they want. More and more businesses are realizing the importance of a strong SEO presence and committing the necessary time and resources to ensure they rank high in all major search engines.

In a nutshell, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s a procedure that businesses use to drive more traffic to their sites. Whether you’re an established brand or are just kicking off your online journey, you need to understand what makes up a successful SEO strategy and how to implement it into your business.

The Importance Of Keywords

Keywords are important because they help search engines figure out what your website is about. Your keywords should be carefully chosen and incorporated throughout your content to maximise their effect. When someone searches for a product or service, they typically use keywords to find what they are looking for. For example, if someone were looking for a travel planner for a cruise ship, they would type in travel planner cruise ship in the search bar, click on the first result and enter their destination and travel dates to be brought to a page with all the information they need.

Choosing the right keywords is essential, otherwise, you could end up with all websites showing up in your search results, which would be pretty useless. Not only that, but you could end up with massive competition for certain keywords and extremely low search volumes, causing you to lose out on potential customers.

Backlinks

Backlinks are crucial in gaining a good rank in the search engines because they represent how relevant and trustworthy other websites think your content is. The more backlinks you have, the higher you will climb in the search engines. Incoming links are also very important as they provide more opportunities to grow your business. If you own a travel blog, for example, you could link to popular articles about cruise ships or travel to destinations you’ve never been to before.

If you’re looking for some help getting the most out of your existing backlinks, check out this SEO link building tool from HubSpot, which can help you find relevant websites that have already linked to your current content or provide a good match for your target keywords.

Content

High-quality content is another vital factor that influences your website’s SEO performance. The content on your website should be valuable and worth reading or listening to. You should have both lengthy articles and brief videos to attract various audiences. The better the content, the better the SEO.

The ideal amount of content for your site is quite a grey area. Some studies show that video content can improve your SEO performance, while others show that text is still king when it comes to organic traffic. It really depends on a number of factors, such as your target audience and the type of content you offer. If you want to learn more, here are some helpful tips from Smart SEO on the topic of video content for your website.

White-Hollar Versus Blue-Hollar SEO

You’ll often see SEO strategies referred to as white-collar or blue-collar, but that’s not entirely accurate. While some SEO tasks, like keyword research, link building and content creation, are done by full-time staff members, the work of analyzing your site’s performance and adjusting your strategy is known as executive or senior SEO management. This is often done by a full-time inhouse SEO expert or freelance consultants. The distinction is that white-collar SEO is done at an individual level while blue-collar SEO is typically undertaken as part of a larger organisational strategy.

If your organization is looking for someone to help take the load off of you and your staff, consider a white-collar SEO strategy. The good news is that these strategies are proven to work and give you a good start to boost your SEO performance.

However, if your business already has a Marketing department that’s charged with overseeing the whole digital marketing strategy, including SEO, then consider a blue-collar SEO strategy. Your Marketing department will have a much clearer picture of what is working and what needs to be adjusted, as part of a larger digital marketing strategy.

Local SEO vs. International SEO

Another important consideration when choosing your keywords is determining whether you should focus on local SEO or international SEO. To some extent, this will depend on your target audience. If you are looking for highly specific, technical keywords, like “cheapest airfare to Amsterdam”, you will probably want to target local users and ensure that your website shows up in their local search results. On the other hand, if you are targeting global audiences, you may want to consider including keywords that are more general in nature, like “Amsterdam”, “cruise ship” or “travel agent”.

A lot of SEOs will argue that international SEO can also bring in lucrative revenue and expand your business opportunities. The important thing to keep in mind is that each strategy has its perks and quirks, and you need to choose which one is the best for your business. The decision is not an easy one, but in the end, it’s all about performing well in the search engines and driving traffic to your site.

Summary

In this article, we discussed the importance of SEO and how to choose an SEO strategy that will boost your business.