Search engine optimization (SEO) has one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) for the effort. But to move forward with SEO requires a plan. Here is a roadmap for your SEO efforts in 2017.
Identify Key Target Audiences
The more information you have about your visitors, the better you can target those customers. Through analytics, gathering information about Facebook followers, and any means by which you can better understand your audience’s likes and wants. Where are they from, what age group they are in, what gender, education levels or any other information you can glean can help you create content and a user experience geared toward that target audience.
Analyze Off-Page Search Signals and the Competitive Landscape
In other words, you need to spy on your competition to understand what keywords they are ranking for and how they are getting their backlinks. What forms of social media are they using and which influencers are they associate with? Armed with this knowledge, you can then create a plan to duplicate their success. You will know which influencers you need to reach out to and to try to form a relationship with them as well.
Attracting the same kinds of backlinks can help you increase your own search placement.
What Kinds of Devices Are Your Visitors Using?
It’s very important to have a responsive website that can deliver content in various forms to users on a PC, smart phone or tablet device. Your content needs to not only be optimized for search engines, but for display across various platforms.
Identify Optimization Barriers and Adjust
Before you even address your site’s content, keywords and visitor demographics, you’ll need to fix any issues that may be affecting your results placement. Your site’s speed, bloated images, broken links, missing meta tags and other issues can be hindering your site’s performance and placement. Identify and correct these issues.
Use Local Directories to Your Advantage
There are many SEO professionals that are focusing on local SEO now. Google is taking into account a searcher’s location to return results that are local to the user. In order to take advantage of this, you need to make sure your business, if it’s local, is registered with any local directories. Make sure that your business is registered with Google business and that you have a complete profile, with a link leading back to your site, on pages like Yelp, Yellow Pages and even Angie’s List.
Increasing your authority in a local area can increase your search rankings and your traffic.
These are just a few strategies to get you headed down the right path. It’s important that you maintain consistent search engine optimization efforts and continually learn and grow in your efforts. The best practices to SEO are constantly changing, so it’s best to keep up with the changes and adjust accordingly.