Keyword Research
Keyword research begins with researching what people are typing into their browsers when they enter a particular keyword or phrase into a search engine. This will give you insight into what terms are being searched for, and which websites are ranking high in these searches. If you are not already doing this type of research, you should start now. You need to know how people are searching for information to help guide your content development. A good place to begin looking is Google Trends. Here you can see how often certain phrases are used in relation to time. This shows you trends over the last 3 years. You can also view historical data by clicking on the drop down menu.
Another tool that can be very useful is SEMrush. With this tool you can find out which keywords are driving traffic to your site. You will also learn about which keywords are profitable (meaning they bring in revenue). You may want to set up alerts for the most popular keywords for your industry. You can then use these alerts to create content around these topics.
Content Creation
Once you have done some keyword research, it is time to create content around those words. Content creation does not necessarily mean writing thousands of articles, but rather creating a variety of types of content that relate to your industry and your products. For example, if you sell dog food, you could write product reviews or articles relating to dog nutrition. If you are selling software, you could write webinars relating to various aspects of software. There are several different ways to incorporate content into your website. One way would be to create blog posts that contain links back to your website. Another option is to include videos or images that link back to your website.
When creating content, always try to keep the reader's experience in mind. Make sure the text flows naturally and doesn't feel like a series of unrelated ideas. Don't try to cram too much information into one post. Remember that search engines only look at the title and summary of your article when deciding where to rank it. Include keywords within the first 100 words to make sure that your readers will find it relevant.
Testing
After you have created content, you will want to test it. Testing involves using different variations of the same content to see which performs best. For example, if you are working on a blog related to dog nutrition, you might want to try two versions of an article - one that includes pictures and another that contains no pictures. By changing the wording slightly, you can get a better idea of how well your content works.
In addition to testing your content, you will want to do some A/B testing. This means running multiple versions of your website simultaneously. In this case, you would run two versions of your website, one with the old version of your content and the other with the new version. Then you would track the performance of both sites to determine which one performed better. This method allows you to measure things like bounce rate, average visit duration, number of page views, etc. These measurements are essential because it gives you valuable insight into how users interact with your site. This helps you improve your site based on user behavior, which ultimately increases your conversion rates.
Refinement and Optimization
As you gain a deeper knowledge of your customers and their needs, you will want to continually refine and optimize your website. You should continue to monitor your analytics to measure visitor behavior and identify areas for improvement. Once you understand what drives users away from your site, you can address these issues before they become major problems. For example, if you notice that visitors tend to leave after just one click, you can implement changes to the design of your website to ensure they stay longer. Similarly, if you notice that your bounce rate is getting worse, you can look into improving your landing page. These are just a few examples of how you can monitor and optimize your website. There are many tools available to help you with this process, including Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools and Clicktale.
Conclusion
As you can see, there is a lot involved in optimizing your website for search engines. While it is easier said than done, it is definitely worth the effort. As long as you are committed to the process, it will pay off in the end.
