How to Build a Winning SEO Strategy

Given the current state of the world, internet use is at an all-time high. People have been doing more online shopping and spending more time online in general because of COVID-19. Throughout 2020, SEO was critical for virtually every business, and the same will be true in 2021. As the New Year approaches, keep the below tips in mind for building a winning SEO strategy in 2022. 

Start With Keyword Research

Keywords are words that are searched for on Google, Bing, and other search engines, and they are an important factor in determining the ranks of your website. You need to use the proper amount of keywords in the right places so that your pages will rise up the rankings over time. If you are an SEO company in Brisbane, for instance, and you want people who are performing local searches for SEO to find you, then writing content optimized for the keywords “SEO Brisbane” is a good way to start. 

Keyword strategy has evolved a lot over the years. It used to be a matter of stuffing as many as possible into your content to game the system, but Google has gotten much better at spotting and penalizing this spa. Nowadays, you have to start with good keyword research, employ a wider range of keywords, and integrate them naturally into your content. Google’s algorithms get smarter by the year and, increasingly, you have to work for it.

Build Quality Backlinks 

Getting backlinks is another (perhaps the most important) factor in your SEO success. When another website links to yours–in an article or blog post–they have given you a “backlink.” Not only does this help you establish authority, but it will increase the likelihood of people clicking through to your website since it appears on other trustworthy domains.

If you build compelling content, it will eventually earn you organic links. The more closely your content matches a person’s search intent, the more likely people in your industry or niche will mention your site. While you can always try reaching out to other sites to swap links—quid pro quo—there are a number of other ways to get links back to your site. You can write guest posts and testimonials, answer questions on places like Quora, make shareable material like infographics and videos, and post on social media. 

Learn On-Page and Technical SEO

There are a number of important technical features on your site which, when optimized, can have a large impact on your SEO performance. When it comes down to it, if your UX isn’t smooth and accessible, it will be hard for visitors to use and navigate it. This is especially the case when it comes to responsive sites that display well across a variety of screens, particularly mobile ones. Mobile accounts for well over half of online traffic, so designing a website that is easy to view on a mobile browser and screen is key. 

Good SEO also means making sure your site loads quickly, getting rid of backlinks to websites that are irrelevant or untrustworthy, and building a clear XML sitemap with a good URL structure. All of these technical SEO strategies will help your page rank higher. You don’t want anything to stop your SEO efforts from making your website more visible and increasing your organic traffic. 

Write For Human Readers Before Search Engines

The Google algorithm gets more intelligent by the day. The best AI and software engineers in the world work on it and it continues to better align with human thinking and sensibilities. There is no loophole or secret method for outwitting a search engine and its algorithms, so don’t waste your time trying. Write for people first, and then tailor your content to search engines.

Finally, your goal should always be to provide your audience with what they want, which can only be accomplished by writing compelling, unique material. People can spot a keyword that has been shoehorned in and stuffed throughout an article. The best practice is to use them where they make sense and let primary keywords improve your already useful and interesting material.

Pay Attention to Metadata

Not only is metadata nearly as important as your keyword research, but, it is also the most direct way to convince someone to visit your website. This is because it is one of the first things both Google and a potential new visitor will see. Google’s crawlers (the software that reads and indexes pages) are used by Google to scan websites and collect information that matches search requests. The most relevant are ranked at the top of the search engine results page.

When the crawlers index a site, metadata is one of the first things they search for after indexing the site’s URL. These include meta descriptions and titles, which are the page title and short preview line that appear when you search for something in Google. Alt-tags on things like images are also of the utmost importance. These work like a secondary name if Google has difficulty reading the first one. Think of your metadata as your shop window, giving people a glimpse into your site and its content. 

Write for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets have very much taken over the SERPs at this point. Even if you haven’t heard the term, you probably know what they are. When you search for something on Google, the featured snippet is the highlighted response box you see at the top of the page. If a page on your site ends up here, you have done something right. 

A good way to optimize your content so that it stands a chance of ending up as a featured snippet is to include things like infographics, numbered lists, bullet points, and structure your title so that it is a direct response to a question-based search. Snippets don’t always convert into clicks, but they are part of a huge number of Google searches. They are a great way to promote your brand and get your name out there. 

In conclusion 

SEO is a multifaceted approach to marketing and business promotion that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes continuous learning, patience, trial, and error, and, if you are not hiring a pro, a willingness to self-teach. Luckily, there is no shortage of information online to help you get started. Keep the above tips in mind and jump-start your SEO approach this year and every year after.