When it comes to getting your brand in front of more people, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a valuable asset to use in your digital marketing tool kit. This is because using the right keywords on your website will help you climb the ranks of Google, though great SEO goes much deeper than simple keyword research.
With that said, we’ve come up with a list of six awesome SEO tips that will help to improve brand awareness, boost your search rankings and build your reputation as a thought leader.
- Create an epic user experience
- Don’t overlook image SEO
- Tap into video marketing
- Rank for the Featured Snippet
- Update old content
- Use the topic cluster model
1. Create an epic user experience
Our first tip is to think about your website as a whole and concentrate on a fantastic user experience. This is important in an SEO context because search engines are more likely to crawl and rank websites that provide an easy user journey.
A sure-fire way to create a great user experience is to make all content easy to read. Break up text with headings, utilise short paragraphs, include images and videos and make your content as engaging as possible.
2. Don’t overlook image SEO
Optimising the images you use on your website is just as important as optimising content. Alt text (alternative text) is the SEO description that needs to be filled out for every photo and helps people find your content when they are browsing in the ‘images’ section of Google.
When writing your alt text, focus on being descriptive and write text that is relevant to the content on the page. Avoid keyword stuffing as it will lead to a negative user experience and may lower your search ranking.
3. Tap into video marketing
As a popular form of content, video is one of the most effective mediums to incorporate into your SEO strategy. Videos help to improve search rankings by keeping consumers on a page for longer, which Google monitors through a metric called dwell time.
A good optimisation tip is to make your video the focus of a page, rather than embedding it randomly in a blog post. If you make people work hard to find a video, then search engines are unlikely to index it.
Instead, put your video at the top of a page and create text that complements it, so viewers are encouraged to stay for longer.
4. Rank for the Featured Snippet
Featured Snippets are the results that appear at the very top of Google, usually after ads, but before the ranked results. They can be identified as a block of text that typically has an image or video beside it, which has been pulled from the content that’s appeared in the search query.
As Featured Snippets appear at the top of the page, this provides an opportunity for brands to stand out over their competitors. It also reveals extra information about your content, increasing the likelihood of readers clicking through to your website.
According to SEM Rush, many Featured Snippets have question related keywords in them (77.6%), with ‘why’ being a popular choice. This highlights that you should optimise your content to answer key questions related to your industry.
5. Update old content
Producing new content is exciting, yet it’s easy to overlook the content that’s already been published. Going back to a previous blog or article and updating it with new information is an effective way of improving search rankings and opening up new engagement opportunities.
We’d recommend doing some keyword research to see if there are any new keywords that can be added to a page. You should also feature new links in the content so you’re always building connections to the most authoritative sources in your industry.
6. Use the topic cluster model
The topic cluster model, created by HubSpot, is an excellent technique to include in your SEO strategy. It works by linking several content pieces to one large theme and typically takes the form of a ‘pillar page’ and ‘cluster pages.’
As an example, a healthcare brand could want to rank for the keyword ‘telehealth’ and creates a pillar page that covers that topic. The brand could then create four cluster pages that are about topics related to their telehealth service, such as ‘online acne treatment,’ ‘online eczema treatment’ etc.
On every cluster page, the brand would create detailed information for each treatment and optimise for specific keywords. So, the topic cluster model has the dual effect of improving user experience and providing long-form content to keep people on a page.
Start your SEO journey with Trio Media
As one of the top digital marketing companies in the UK we specialise in creating SEO strategies for a wide range of industries, covering healthcare, eCommerce, technology and more. Get in touch today on 0113 357 0440 to start your SEO journey with us.
