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 Defined
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:
- Increased targeted organic traffic to a website
- Improved brand awareness and credibility
- Higher lead generation and sales
- Better return on investment than other digital channels
How SEO Works in Today’s Digital Landscape
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:
- Relevance: The content must precisely match what the searcher wants to find.
- Authority: The site must have authority on that particular topic in the eyes of search engines.
- Quality: The website and content itself meet certain quality standards.
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.
4 Types of SEO Strategies
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
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.
On-Page SEO Best Practices
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:
- Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant and high-traffic keywords related to your content
- Place your target keywords strategically in your content, including in the page title, headers (H1, H2, H3 tags), meta description, and throughout the body of your content
- Create high-quality, informative, and engaging content that provides value to your audience
- Use header tags to structure your content logically
- Write compelling meta titles and meta descriptions that accurately represent the content of your page
- Create clean and descriptive URLs that reflect the content of the page
- Link to other relevant pages on your website using descriptive anchor text
- Optimize images by reducing file sizes without sacrificing quality
- Enhance the user experience by organizing content logically, making navigation easy, and ensuring a clean and appealing design
- Keep your content fresh and up-to-date by periodically revisiting and updating your pages
Off-Page SEO
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.
Off-Page SEO Best Practices
- Quality backlinks from authoritative websites remain a critical factor in off-page SEO
- I.e, guest posting on relevant and authoritative websites, participating in industry-specific forums and online communities, earning links through content that provides value and solves problems, and building relationships with influencers and bloggers who can mention or link to your content
- Actively engage on social media platforms to increase your online visibility and brand awareness
- Monitor your online reputation and address negative reviews or comments promptly
- Monitor mentions of your brand, products, or services across the web
- Collaborate with influencers in your industry to reach a wider audience
- Share noteworthy company updates, product launches, or events through press releases on reputable PR distribution platforms
- Republish your content on reputable platforms such as Medium, LinkedIn, or industry-specific sites
- Participate in podcasts or webinars as a guest to showcase your expertise and reach new audiences
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
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.
Technical SEO Best Practices
- Ensure that your website is mobile-responsive and provides a great user experience on mobile devices
- Improve your website’s loading speed by compressing images, leveraging browser caching, minimizing JavaScript and CSS files, and using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
- Secure your website with an SSL certificate to enable HTTPS
- Create XML sitemaps to help search engine crawlers discover and index your website’s pages efficiently
- Implement a robots.txt file to instruct search engine bots on which pages to crawl and which to exclude
- Use canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues
- Implement structured data or schema markup to provide additional context to search engines about your content
- Opt for a responsive design that adjusts to various screen sizes and devices
- Create both HTML and XML sitemaps for your website
- Customize your 404 error pages to provide users with helpful navigation options or suggestions for finding the content they’re looking for
- Compress and optimize images to reduce page load times without sacrificing quality
- Address canonicalization issues by choosing a preferred version of URLs (www vs. non-www or HTTP vs. HTTPS) and implementing 301 redirects or using rel=”canonical” tags
- Regularly audit your website for crawl errors, blocked resources, and indexability issues
- Continuously monitor and enhance website security to protect against hacking and malware
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
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 Best Practices
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:
- Claim your Google Business Profile listing if you haven’t already. Ensure that your business information, including name, address, phone number (NAP), and website URL, is accurate and consistent across all online platforms.
- Ensure that your business’s NAP information is consistent across all online directories, websites, and social media profiles. Use structured data markup (schema.org) to provide search engines with structured location information.
- Conduct keyword research to identify local keywords and phrases that potential customers might use when searching for products or services in your area.
- Optimize your website’s on-page elements for local SEO, including the use of location-specific keywords in title tags, headers, and content.
- Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and other relevant review websites. Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative, professionally and promptly.
- Build local backlinks from reputable local websites and directories.
- Create content that is relevant to your local audience. This can include blog posts, articles, and event announcements that highlight local news or topics.
- Use Google Posts to share updates, promotions, and news directly on your Google Business Profile listing. This can increase engagement and visibility in local search results.
- List your business on popular local business directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Bing Places for Business.
- Regularly monitor your local SEO efforts using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
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.
Understanding the Impact of User Intent On Your SEO Strategy
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.
Different Types of User Intents for SEO
The main types of user intent typically fall into these categories:
- Informational: searching to learn or research a topic
- Navigational: looking for a specific website or page
- Transactional: intent to make a purchase or acquire a product/service
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.
How to Align Your SEO Strategies with User Intent
Here are some tips for optimizing based on user intent:
- Conduct keyword research to understand user intent for high-volume queries
- Create customized landing pages aligned to each category of intent
- Ensure your metadata, content, and calls-to-action match the searcher’s intent
- Analyze search analytics to identify where intent gaps exist
- Optimize site architecture using categories, filters, and facets to serve different intents
- Staying on top of SEO trends, and best practices, and leveraging tools to extract user intent signals can help strengthen alignment.
Key Takeaways
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!
