SEO (search engine optimization) is the term that considers as a holy grail in all kinds of marketing plans and strategies. It is a reliable way to get free traffic from search engines for your business and it also knows as organic traffic in more technical terms. Digital businesses rely on their majority of traffic from this method.
In your inbound marketing plan, SEO plays the most important part. When users find your website or your content they tend to like it or if it provides value they share it on their social media. We have discussed some of the key factors to include SEO in your inbound marketing plan.
1. SEO: Powered by Blogging
Every Brand these days should have up to date blogging on their website. All brand have their own information and thought in the industry which they can project onto the world through blogs and also share their product and service with it. In doing so this also powers organic traffic for the blog.
Here is some factor that will determine your blog is generating traffic and doing SEO correctly.
- Don’t sound robot: As you write your blog post, do not just stuff keyword that won’t work anymore plus google detects this easily, and also it does not look genuine.
- Title Heading: Heading is important cause it helps users to have an indication about the whole article and they help the search engine crawl bot to understand the targeted keywords, that why use your main focus keyword as an H1 tag.
- Responsive Answers: The users always have some questions regarding their problem, they want answers. Having answers will always help you drive traffic and also gives you an idea for keyword research, even google has its own Question hub, it is beta only available for some country.
- SEO Plugin: There are several plugins available for WordPress like Yoast and Rankmath. I personally use rank math, these plugins will eliminate any type of guessing SEO. It will provide you with the right keyword density, meta tags, keyword in the content, and title readability.
- Post Frequency: The posting of Content should be at the same interval cause it’s best for users to have a habit of having your content every time and it also tells search engine bot when to crawl the website as you post every day or week.
- Longer Post: Every time you post something it should be from 600-2500 words cause google prefers this length, the longer user engages with your content the better it is, or you can also embed video to increase engagement. According to one study from QuickSprout, longer blogs always work better. The graph from serpIQ shows this idea.
2. SEO: Intent VS Keyword
In recent times after a couple of algorithm updates, the user’s intent has become more important than keyword optimization still has a major place in the organic traffic.
However, google crawl bots are still updating the algorithm every month so they can understand the exact intent of the users. The major optimization element like key density doesn’t have the same importance as they had before. So in 2020 or the coming year, the user intent will position the SERPs.
So for the coming years, content marketing strategies should not be just around the optimization of keywords, it should also focus on the customer questions and what queries they have. So brands must check the following with their audience.
- The Pain Point of the audience.
- The Topic your audience want to you cover.
- The Responsive Question with responsive short content.
- The Current services they use and teach them how to use it.
Also to find the trends Content creators can use google trends or other various SEO tools, the google analytics will help you understand the data of your website and how users are behaving to certain content, also determines where the engagement is high or low. Below the graphs from Neil Patel clearly shows that how users navigate through the website after asking their question. There are four events or timeline below.
Every day 5.2 billion searches happens with google only, there are millions of people who ask questions in search engines. Brands need to recognize this and provide the most valuable content for their audience.
3. SEO: Social Media
Social Media also plays a major role in driving or generated organic traffic from SERPs, SEO, or Social both known as inbound marketing strategies. They found growth in both of these platforms which are based on great and valuable content. Most of the big time marketer agrees that their SEPRs growth relies on social media also impact their website optimization. Here are the three major things that are responsible for their significant growth.
- Links: When brands share valuable content on social media, their followers tend to like it and share it with others. As a result, the users link back to the brand website, they get new external backlinks which Google prefers very much. The most popular way of getting viral with posts is hashtags and influencers, that way you can sensation on social media.
- Followers: Suppose a user wants to buy something on Instagram, one Instagram account with fewer followers, while the other one significantly more followers. The one with more followers will have higher engagement plus a higher position in SERPs cause that generates more shares and comments, which signals Google that post has some good content. The key is to interact with followers to grow organically.
- Local Communities: With over the years of update Google now focusing more on local businesses to help them grow with SERPs. Social media also provide local communities where you interact with the local audience. If you sell some physical products then it best to start this way. Communities have updates on local events which keeps you update and also following local businesses create SEO authority.
- Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is when you collaborate with a social media influencer to reach a potential audience for your brand. The most important thing that the audience should align with your campaign for a good result. Social media also provide insight and analytics to decide what influencer to choose.
Search engines are learning every month as algorithms get updates and evolving fast. Optimizing content according to the users is important but and sharing helps get you at top of SERPs. Social media also power SEO in your inbound marketing plan.