Four Important SEO Strategies for Every Company
There are several different types of important SEO strategies that can be used when trying to boost where your website/page ranks on a search engine. In this article we offer a breakdown of each and suggest tips on how to leverage each one as part of a digital marketing strategy.
A local focused SEO strategy
A local focused SEO strategy is when your keywords, e.g. your business or type of business and the location, feature when someone searches in your local area. For example, if someone searches ‘florist in Manchester’ the big names will come up, but the smaller local florists will rank on the page sometimes nearer the top. This is to do with Google Algorithms that are set to help smaller, local businesses get found.
How do you make this work? Firstly, you need to take advantage of Google’s Data Highlighter service. This assists you with highlighting key words in the title, the location of a business, how many reviews it has had and even the some of the main images. Another way to take advantage of this is join local community directories and by creating local profiles on Google or other search sites. Social media is also an excellent way to help your website rank locally. You can do this by sharing blog posts or information on the latest offers or events.
Barnacle SEO
Barnacle SEO works similarly to the marine creature that it is named after. It is an SEO which attaches itself to something that is much bigger and easier to find. A smaller business with a lower search ranking can benefit by attaching itself it to a larger site and feeding off their SEO ranking.
Take a local builder, for example. We can all agree that a site like Yelp or Trust Pilot will have a much higher ranking in search results. The local builder can sign up to sites like these and focus some of their SEO efforts on increasing their number of positive reviews; they would be attaching themselves to Trust Pilot, much like a barnacle to a ship. If someone searches for Trust Pilot and local builders, the business will then be able to feed off consumer reviews in the search results.
Where to start:
- Identify sites that offer the most by conducting searches using top keywords, phrases, or categories where the business competes.
- Review the sites and directories that are usually on the top of those search results to help you determine where to focus your efforts.
- When looking for sites to include as part of your barnacle SEO strategy get creative and think outside the box to get the best results.
A National SEO Strategy
A National SEO strategy is the opposite approach to local SEO. This type of strategy would normally apply to a business that isn’t bound to a specific location and can provide a service to anyone in the nation. Apple, Tesco or any large organisation are examples of businesses that would use this type of strategy as they have the ability to sell their products and services to anyone, anywhere, whether this is online or physical.
When using this approach, the strategy focuses on feeding search engines with information so consumers can find the business no matter the location of the person searching. This is a achieved simply by:
- Removing references to location.
- Using less specific keywords/phrases. For example, when using a national strategy, the key word might be “Marketing Consultant’ instead of “Marketing Consultant, Manchester, advertising, experienced”.
This approach can be very expensive, and a lot of smaller and medium-sized businesses simply won’t be able to compete with the fees that larger companies pay search engines for a keyword.
Technical SEO
Any business that wants to be found online needs to include Technical SEO in their strategy. Technical SEO involves the backend of a website. If you not familiar with how your backend works, you can hire a PPC or keyword specialist to help you with this. Technical SEO is probably the most important part of an SEO strategy.
The main aspects that are important are:
- Website speed and mobile friendliness.
- Optimised page titles and URL, title tags and image titles & descriptions. These will include the keywords that you want consumers to search.
- Internal, external and outbound links.
The most important thing to remember is whichever of the four essential SEO strategies you use, they all must support the overall SEO strategy and digital marketing strategy for the business to rank higher in search results than the competition.
