Become a pro in SEO with Direct Impact
Are you looking to get more traffic to your website? Using SEO (search engine optimization) is the best way to get organic traffic to your website. About 72% of search traffic clicks on an organic link on page 1? That’s a huge amount of traffic that you’re missing out on if you’re not on page 1 with an organic result! To help you understand how to set-up a SEO strategy we created a list of things you must know to help you get started.
All SEO-pillars are just as important
A well-made SEO-strategy involves all pillars of SEO. When you want to rank at the top of the search results you’re going to have to put work into all of them. Why? Google’s algorithm is designed to sort through billions of web pages and find “the most relevant”web pages for a search query. Over 200 ranking factors are in their algorithm. With this many rules in an algorithm it will follow any form of behaviour involving your website and usage of search engines to determine what “the most relevant” page is. All these ranking factors are divided into three main pillars to work on:
On-page SEO:
On-page SEO is SEO that focuses on the ranking factors that are contributed to the page itself. This includes ranking factors like: keyword usage, headers, title tags, alt tags, meta-information, length of text, internal linking, landing page structure, URL structure and more.
Technical SEO:
Technical SEO refers to optimizations done to the website itself. These optimizations focus on factors like crawlability, indexation, pagespeed, mobile friendliness, redirects, code to text ratio, problems with CSS / javascript, orphaned pages, sitemaps, robot.txt files and more.
Authority:
Authority focuses on the worth of your website in the eyes of search engines. This worth is, mostly, measured by the amount of quality links you receive from other domains. How is that quality defined? For example, a link with a single keyword on a startpage is going to give you less worth than a link on a very highly visited blog website.
Tooling and data are key
SEO all starts with the right tooling and data. Without data, you will be flying in the dark. But to have data, you also need the right tooling. These tools help you to keep track of your improvements SEO-wise. Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the bare minimum you must have to keep track of your organic performance. If you want to be able to keep closer track of your results per keyword you should add a tool like Semrush, Ahrefs and/or SE Ranking to the mix. The technical part of SEO also requires tools to identify optimizations. Tools like Semrush or Screaming SEO Spider Frog can analyse your website and show you what kind of optimizations you can do.
Next to these tools you will also need tools that help you find out what people are actually looking for. For this tools like keywordtool.io, ubersuggest.com, semrush.com and answerthepublic.com provide a solution. These tools help you to find out the keywords your customers are typing into search engines or find out keywords your competitors are using. Last, but not least, you will need tools that can help you gather data about your authority like majestic.com. A lot of tools out there, like Semrush, are tools to be able to use for more than just one pillar. Need any advice on SEO-tooling, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Know your customer and the algorithm
When talking about SEO I can’t stress this enough: know the customer and know the algorithm. You have to know in which phases they look which what content specifically. Knowing search intent is key in this case. Every keyword has an intent behind it. This could be the intent of looking for information or to buy a certain product type, to buy a specific product. Your keyword grouping and content creation need to revolve around the intent your customer is showing with his search. ‘Best material Swimsuits’ need a different landings page than ‘buy O’Neill swimsuits’. Once you know this you need to combine this with your knowledge of the search engine to give the best content within the guidelines of the algorithms.
Research, plan, implement, analyse, optimise, test and try new things!
While search engines update their algorithm, we find ways to improve and make use of the new updates to rise to the top. To do this it takes a couple of words you must burn into your mind: Research, plan, implement, analyse, optimise, test and try new things. When you will be working on SEO this is what you should constantly be doing. Don’t congratulate yourself on reaching that top organic position, no you need to constantly research to know what optimization opportunities you have. Make sure you work on the opportunities with the highest impact first. Don’t linger on, focus on implementation to gain results. Analyze constantly to be able to see what impact your implementations have had. You can never be afraid to test things in search of optimization. And next to all of this, you need to have fun trying new things out. Google throws a curve ball every so often that changes the game. An example that set the SEO world on fire was the featured snippet. Suddenly there was something new that had organic value and finding out how to rank for this properly is just fun! You need to research and mostly just try out new things to find out how you turn that curve ball into a homerun!
Want to start fast? Start with a SEO Scan.
A SEO scan gets you a data-driven opinion by our SEO experts on your SEO pain. And also a pragmatic action plan to get you started ASAP on where to improve in your business and where and how to get more insights & actionable data. What are you waiting for? Start with a scan now.
Meet Jordi
Jordi is our SEO specialist. Not only does he know how to boost your ranking in Google, he’s also a real hero when it comes to helping clients. Want to know what Jordi and his team can do for you? Get in touch.
