What Is Thought Leadership and Why Does It Matter?
Salesy content can only get your business so far, which is why thought leadership is an important part of your business growth strategy.
Search engine optimization is an incredibly significant digital marketing strategy that growing businesses should take advantage of. However, it’s important to remember that it isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s a process that requires very specific and consistent actions to see results.
While many think of search engine optimization as writing and sharing relevant content, it’s so much more than that. When it comes down to it, there are four main different types of SEO strategies: on-page, off-page, technical, and local. Throughout this blog, we’ll cover what goes into each of these SEO strategies, the best practices for applying these strategies, and expand on the importance of user intent in your SEO strategy. Let’s get into it.
SEO (search engine optimization) refers to strategies, techniques, and best practices used to rank higher in search engine results pages for relevant search queries. The higher a site ranks for keyword searched by the target audience, the better visibility, traffic and conversions it can achieve.
For businesses, SEO delivers a number of important benefits, including:
The working mechanism of SEO revolves around providing search engines what they want, which is content and sites most relevant and useful for search queries by users.
When a user searches for something, Google and other search engines display pages from sites that satisfy three core evaluators:
Additionally, technical site health, positive user experience signals like dwell time and low bounce rates, and off-page factors like quality backlinks also matter. By focusing efforts on these critical SEO success parameters, brands can improve search visibility.
SEO may be costly and time-consuming, but it’s a necessary component of B2B digital marketing. Explore how our Inbound SDR solution empowers growing businesses like yours to generate more consistent inbound leads.
While there are many sub-categories of SEO, generally speaking, there are 4 main types of SEO strategies: on-page, off-page, technical, and local SEO. Here’s what goes into each strategy and best practices for doing them successfully.
On-page SEO focuses on optimizing the content and structure of individual web pages to make them more appealing to search engines and users. This includes optimizing elements such as keywords, meta tags, header tags, image alt tags, and URL structure, and improving overall content quality. On-page SEO ensures that your web pages are relevant and easily understood by search engine crawlers.
Writing and distributing web content isn’t enough for an effective on-page SEO strategy. Here are some on-page SEO best practices to follow:
Off-page SEO refers to activities and strategies performed outside your website to improve its search engine rankings. The primary focus of off-page SEO is building high-quality backlinks (links from other websites to yours). Techniques like link building, social media marketing, influencer outreach, and online reputation management fall under this category. Off-page SEO helps search engines gauge the authority and trustworthiness of your site.
Remember that off-page SEO is an ongoing effort that requires time and consistency. Building a strong off-page SEO strategy can complement your on-page efforts and help your website rank higher in search engine results.
Technical SEO involves optimizing the technical aspects of a website to make it more search engine-friendly. This includes improving website speed, mobile-friendliness, site architecture, schema markup, XML sitemaps, and addressing issues such as duplicate content, crawlability, and indexability. Technical SEO ensures that search engines can effectively crawl, index, and understand your website.
The readers themselves probably aren’t waiting long for pages to load before they exit, making technical SEO a critical component of your SEO efforts. By implementing these technical SEO best practices, you can create a website that is not only search engine-friendly but also provides a positive experience for users, which can lead to improved rankings and user engagement. Regular monitoring and maintenance are essential to ensure your site remains optimized.
Local SEO is crucial for businesses that serve a specific geographic area. It focuses on optimizing a website to appear in local search results, especially in Google’s Local Pack and Maps. Local SEO strategies include optimizing Google Business Profile listings, acquiring customer reviews, ensuring consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across the web, and targeting location-based keywords. It helps businesses attract nearby customers and drive foot traffic to physical locations.
Local SEO is essential for businesses that serve specific geographic areas. Optimizing your online presence for local search can help attract nearby customers and improve your visibility in local search engine results. Here are some best practices for local SEO:
By following these local SEO best practices, you can enhance your online visibility within your target geographic area and attract more local customers to your business. Remember that local SEO is an ongoing effort, and staying up-to-date with algorithm changes and industry trends is essential for long-term success.
In addition to these four primary types of SEO, there are other specialized areas, such as voice search optimization, video SEO, and e-commerce SEO, which may require specific strategies and considerations based on your website’s goals and niche. Successful SEO often involves a combination of these different types to improve a website’s overall search engine rankings and online visibility.
User intent refers to the purpose and motivation behind a user’s search query. As search engines continue to evolve, they are getting better at understanding user intent and providing the most relevant search results.
Aligning SEO strategies with user intent is crucial for success. Search engines want to provide the best user experience by showing results that match the searcher’s intent. If your content doesn’t match the intent, you will rank lower.
The main types of user intent typically fall into these categories:
SEO strategies need to be tailored based on understanding these search intents. For example, informational queries may require in-depth, comprehensive content, while transactional searches need clear calls to action.
Here are some tips for optimizing based on user intent:
Implementing the four types of SEO strategies is crucial for enhancing the SEO value of your website. When you enhance the SEO value of your website, you have the ability to increase the number of keywords ranked on SERP, ultimately leading to more organic traffic and, ideally, more conversions (depending on the goal of your SEO strategy).
While SEO is a vital digital marketing strategy, it takes a lot of time and expertise to execute it effectively. If you don’t have the bandwidth to handle your SEO strategy internally, it may be worth outsourcing to an SEO agency. That’s where we can come in and help.
At Abstrakt, we work with growing B2B companies across the U.S. to help them generate more leads through SEO. Our SEO lead generation experts are well-versed in the art of search engine marketing and are consistently training themselves on ways that can advance their strategies for clients.
When you’re ready to put your SEO lead generation efforts into the hands of industry-leading experts, contact us!