4 Key Components of a Successful SEO Strategy

What do you do when you don’t know the answer to something? Google it. Google seems to know everything these days. Think about it: how often do you visit a search engine when you’re on the Internet? Your answer is most likely “quite a bit.” How often does a search engine come up with the answer to your question? Quite a bit. What makes this possible, you might ask? Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO.

To put it into the simplest of terms, search engines produce relevant results by crawling and indexing websites’ pages. The search engine “crawls” a site and deciphers the information on the site, then indexes that information for later use.

So, why is SEO so important? Let’s say your company is the most successful digital marketing agency specializing in healthcare in the United States. When someone types “healthcare marketing agency” into a search engine, your company comes up as the last listing on the page. How do you fix this, you ask? There are multiple factors contributing to SEO that influence a website’s position in search engine results – take a look at four key components of a successful SEO strategy!

Keywords

Keywords are words and phrases used throughout website content that makes it possible for searchers to find your site via search engine. Using relevant keywords can make or break your search engine ranking.

Keyword research is important, as simply guessing keywords can cost a company money and time. Think about what people might search for online that would lead them to your website. Utilize Google’s Keyword Planner to search for appropriate keywords and see how they might perform.

Also, keep in mind not to flood your content with keywords. Search engines such as Google penalize sites that overuse keywords. These penalties can range from a lower search result or your site being removed completely.

Link Building

Linking back to your website is a simple way for search engines to build your rank based on a variety of factors. Some believe that the quantity of links is the best way to improve their SEO, but quality of the links actually outranks the amount of them.

A search engine can determine the popularity of a page by analyzing the number and popularity of the pages linking to them. Metrics that influence the quality of these links include trust, spam and authority of the linking pages.

Use your social media channels and blog to link back to your website, and vice versa – when search engines see that other sites are linking back to yours, it builds credibility for your website.

In addition to attracting those quality links, a site should always remove spammy links. These types of links can show up in comment sections and go unseen by website users, but are still seen by search engine robots.

Blog & Social

Blogging consistently is an easy way to generate optimized content, and posting fresh content regularly keeps you relevant in Google’s eyes. To that end, sharing the content that you’re producing and linking to it can greatly contribute to your SEO success. Once you’ve written a blog post that focuses on at least one of your target keywords, share it! Utilize social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to link back to this content – include images so you can share it on Pinterest, as well!

Content

Good content is king. Search engines recognize when your site’s content is reputable – throwing your keywords in all over the place will not get you a higher ranking. Instead, create content that is easy to understand, valuable, brief and appealing. Content comes in all shapes and forms: blog posts, white papers, webpages, case studies and more.

Nowadays, in order for your business to be found online, it is essential that you develop and implement an SEO strategy. Ready to take the first step? Let us know – we’d love to help out!

Updated: Nov 15, 2024