Are You Using the Right Strategies For SEO This Year?
It’s 2021, and we need not explain what SEO is. The majority of businesses – including large-scale organisations and SMEs – are already using search engine optimization. They simply need to avoid the habit of making SEO marketing strategy a one-time exercise.
You may have used the best techniques to optimise your web pages in the past, but they do need adjustments to keep up-to-date with the most current trends and search engine policies.
In this age of digital technology, your website is your showroom. Even if you own a brick and mortar shop or run a food business, most of your new customers will search for your business online before they choose to deal with you. And if you have an attractive website that already describes your products and services creatively, it will be valuable only if your customers can easily find it online.
Not everyone knows the names of the best brands in an industry. More importantly, when searching for local businesses, they use keywords relevant to such organisations and then choose from Google’s top results – this is where you will want your website to be.
This year the major factors that are contributing to the success of SEO campaigns include:
Long-click Focus
In the world of Google, a long click implies that people spend some time on your website when they land upon it. The website engages them adequately to read content, check more of the internal pages and does not bore them into leaving the site quickly.
Long clicks are essential in taking a website higher on search engine results. They demonstrate that:
- The content found is appropriate in response to the user’s query
- The content carries some value and makes for good user experience
- The content is up to date
If you had been attracting long clicks earlier, but there is a sudden drop in traffic now, it means that a competitor’s website has developed content more engaging than yours. That is a sign to make changes on your website.
“No website can stand out without a backbone. That backbone is technical SEO.”
Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis may seem like a never-ending task, and to some extent, it is.
Each one of your competitors has the same goal and will keep working to optimise their sites. However, there is credence in the saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. Your competitors can indeed be your greatest ally when it comes to your SEO and Digital Marketing Strategy. Competitor analysis means tapping into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to reverse engineer them to your benefit.
Work on your PR
Public Relations (PR) is crucial for SEO. When your content gets published on a popular blog site that attracts masses of traffic, and your website link is provided with it, the search engines get a message that your portal is valuable.
PR is not only worthwhile for SEO. It also offers other advantages. As an example, the backlinks you earn on popular social media platforms can help you get your business Twitter, Facebook and Instagram profiles verified.
Ensure that you ‘Google My Business’ is current
To be found, your business must have up to date Google My Business listings. For this, you must upload recent pictures of your premises, respond to all reviews given by your customers, update your business hours for upcoming holidays if any, and see that the phone number, address, email ID and other details are correct.
With the right tactics for your SEO marketing, you can keep up with your rankings and engagement factor on the portal.
“Today it’s not about ‘get the traffic’ – it’s about ‘ get the targeted and relevant traffic’. “
Core Web Vitals
Google and all other search engines change their metrics each year. Core web vitals are an important reason for thinking about a website redesign. In 2021 core web vitals will become one of the many vertebrae that make up the backbone of site rankings. These metrics are used for determining user’s UX. Some of these you will already be familiar with, but with some added tweaks:
- Mobile-friendliness (responsive design)
- HTTPS (Site security)
- Safe Browsing
- Intrusive interstitials (pop-up ads)
- Largest contentful paint (how long it takes for main website content to load)
- First input delay (how long it takes for a site to become interactive)
- Cumulative layout shift (the amount of layout shifting which is unexpected)
Google, in their own words, have said:
“Core Web Vitals are the subset of Web Vitals that apply to all web pages, should be measured by all site owners, and will be surfaced across all Google tools. Each of the Core Web Vitals represents a distinct facet of the user experience, is measurable in the field, and reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome.”
Elements Design Studio
Elements Design Studio has a team of trained and experienced web designers who create distinct elements to make your online platforms unique. We use the best of modern technology and design principles to craft unique websites. For more information visit www.elementsdesignstudio.co.uk