I would say it’s definitely one of the best ways to market any business online.

For us, SEO (search engine optimization) has proven to be integral to driving customers to our site or social media platforms. If you haven’t already started integrating it into your marketing plan, I definitely encourage you to do so.

However, to be clear, SEO is so much more than just adding keywords to your blog posts. Remember, you don’t want just any kind of traffic going to your site; you want the kind of traffic that will eventually convert and become paying customers. In addition, with industries and their audiences maturing, businesses have to be more strategic and purposeful with their marketing efforts.

So, how do you go about leveraging on SEO to improve your online marketing?

1. Start with determining your target market

Your objective is to reach high-value visitors with the potential to become leads. They should at least be interested in what you have to say, if not your product or service itself. To make sure you’re reaching the right demographic, identify key characteristics of your target market. Beyond just basic information like age, location, and income level, determine how they perform their web searches and what they search for. Find out their passions and interests. Create a definite personality to identify with your audience. This will help attract better leads towards your site.

2. Consider the platforms that your audience uses

You don’t really need statistics to illustrate the importance of the mobile market. Today, your audience is very likely browsing and searching on their phones or tablets as much as they do on their desktops. That said, definitely consider optimizing your website for mobile compatibility. Doing so helps you rank better in search engine results.

If you’re not quite sure if your site is mobile friendly? Visit Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test here.

3. Take note, there are more search engines other than Google

Google is so popular that its name is now a verb. While you definitely need to pay attention to Google’s new rules and algorithm changes, it’s wise to pay attention to alternative search engines as well. Bing, Baidu, Ask.com, and Yahoo also contribute to a significant amount of search volume. In fact, while Google accounts for a huge chunk of global desktop search traffic, Bing still gets 7.27%, Baidu at 6.55%, and Yahoo at 5.06%. 

Due to the likelihood of less competition for businesses on these alternative sites, simply incorporating strategic keywords, improving social media engagement, and using meta tags can significantly boost your ranking on these sites.

4.Take note of how search engines themselves have evolved

It wasn’t too long ago when Google couldn’t understand conversational queries made on their site. If you wanted to find an answer to this question for example—“Is SEO the best resource for Internet marketing?” you would have had to type “SEO resource for internet marketing.”

However, Google paid attention to how users actually asked questions and searched for answers online. As such, we can now ask questions as we would in real life—using sentences and phrases that we would use in reality—as if we were talking to another person.

That said, in addition to keywords, key phrases are important for your site’s ranking. It’s not just words that people type in now—they input actual questions.

There you have it. If you have any more questions about this, feel free to reach out to me at Leadspanda and I’d be happy to answer your questions.