Nowadays many customers depend on search engines to help them find everything!
That means regardless of what your business offers, your target audience is already searching for the products or services like you’re on various search engines like Google.
But, how can you attract your targeted audience to your website?
Answer: Search Engine Optimization.
Introduction to SEO
You have likely heard about SEO already and you haven’t heard about SEO. The basic Wikipedia definition states “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.”
SEO helps you increase your business searchability and visibility. SEO helps small and large business owners create fast, robust, and user-friendly websites that rank higher in search engines, and helps business owners, bring more potential customers, and eventually increases conversion rates.
If you’re a business owner, you should start utilizing SEO to build a strong web presence and stay ahead of the competition to gain new customers for your business and take it to the next level.
Here are the top 4 benefits of SEO:
- User-Friendly Website
SEO will help you create a faster, smoother, user-friendly, and responsive website that is clean and well-structured and compels your visitors to stay longer on your website, decreasing the bounce rate and increasing page views.
- Bring More Customer
Probably the most important reasons for having a website are to increase the customer base and stay ahead of the competition. Businesses that have an SEO optimized website bring MORE customers and grow as twice as fast as businesses that do not have one.
SEO helps businesses to bring in more customers that are actively seeking to find your product or service! It is one of the most efficient and effective ways of marketing that are present in the market today.
- Better Conversion Rate
SEO Optimized websites are faster, easier to surf, and responsive and Websites that are easy to read and navigate are more likely to grab and hold attention from your readers or visitors – i.e., they’re more likely to become your loyal customers, subscribers, and returning visitors.
- More Targeted Traffic
Since you will be targeting terms with the right search intent behind them – meaning the people searching these terms will have the intention of looking for a service or product like yours. So, they are more likely to convert than those searching for less relevant terms.
SEO in 2021
SEO is still a viable channel for businesses in 2021. However, make no mistake- it is getting more difficult as Modern search engines and their algorithms have become vastly more sophisticated, and therefore the SEO techniques that used to work many years ago no longer work today.
Previously, you needed large volumes of content and backlinks to be successful. While some of that is true, it’s an overall simplification of how modern SEO works. Now quality is more important than quantity. Still in 2021 High-quality content became a decisive factor for your website’s rank popularity a long time ago and it’s still in the first place.
Here are a few things that you should keep in mind while doing SEO in 2021:
- It’s all about mobile
Since Google switched over to mobile-first indexing, it judges your site by how it works on mobile, even when a lot of your traffic is from the desktop. You should test whether your mobile site works just as well as your desktop site. Is structured data functioning and complete? Do images have relevant alt-texts? Is the content complete and easy to read? Make it lightning-fast, easy to use, and useful.
- Improve Site Quality
nobody knows exactly what happens behind the scenes of a search engine, you can look back over a greater period to determine trends. One thing that always keeps popping u and that quality. To win in SEO in 2021, your site needs to be technically flawless, offer a spectacular user experience and great content, targeted at the right audience at the right time in their user journey. And, of course, your site’s speed needs to improve.
- Enhance User Experience
Improving the user experience is a sure-fire way to make your — potential — customers happy. Happy customers make happy search engines!
Competition is going to be fierce than ever before, now everybody is working hard on their websites and new algorithms and policies are constantly increasing the difficulty. It simply means that you’ll need to concentrate your efforts better and increase the amount of research to achieve your targeted goals.
Strategies to Implement In 2021 to Scale Globally
Before we start talking about the strategies you need to know that Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes per day! If we narrow it down it comes roughly around 9 changes per day!
The real trick to rank in 2021 is to leverage the technology. Here are some advanced SEO strategies and tactics that you might consider implementing in 2021.
#1 SEO A/B Split Testing
Understanding how users engage and interact with the website is very important in successful SEO and running tests that show us what users want from our sites is one way you can do this.
Testing allows you to experiment with ways to increase conversion rates and UX by comparing a control page against a test group to analyze performance impact based on changes made and that’s where A/B testing helps.
With A/B testing we can change one or more elements of a page and compare how the original and test page perform when shown to a different segment of the audience. A/B testing can do a lot more than prove how changes can impact your conversions in the short-term; it helps you prioritize what to do in the future. Here are some benefits of A/B split testing.
● Improved User Engagement
Many elements are included in a page like subject line, image, CTAs, font, layout, and much more. Testing one change at a time helps us by showing which change affected the users’ behavior and which did not. Updating the experience with the “winning” changes will improve the user experience in aggregate, ultimately optimizing it for success.
● Reduced Bounce Rates
A/B testing helps you keep visitors on the site or app longer. The more time visitors spend on site, the likelier they’ll discover the value of the content, ultimately leading to a conversion.
● Increased Conversion Rates
Knowing what works and what doesn’t helps convert more leads. A/B testing is the simplest, and most effective way of knowing what appeals to the customers, this helps in converting the visits into sign-up and purchases.
● Risk Reduction
The most obvious way to use A/B testing is to rule something that decreases conversions. This helps in reducing the risk as decisions are well-informed.
- Results are Quick
A/B test can provide significant, actionable results as to which changes are most engaging for users no matter how small the sample size is. This allows for short-order optimization of new sites, new apps, and low-converting pages.
#2 Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness
E-A-T or expertise, authority, and trustworthiness comes from Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines – a document used by quality raters to assess the quality of Google’s search results. Think of E-A-T as the reason why users would choose your site over your competition’s. E-A-T could have a direct impact on how Google receives and ranks your website.
E-A-T is among the top 3 considerations for Page Quality. So, if you haven’t been paying attention to E-A-T content before, you should start doing so. Immediately. E-A-T determines a website’s value. Raters look to see if they’re getting a good experience and if the content meets the required standards. If the raters feel that users would feel comfortable reading, sharing, and recommending your website’s content, that earns the site a high level of E-A-T.
#3 Understanding the Variation in Demand from Region to Region
In a global search, Google SERP layout and content type change from country to country. Not only this but keywords and traffic rates also change with the region. Different regions have different expectations from brands within the same industry in terms of what they want to see before they make a purchase decision.
While competing globally you have to consider all the factors, you must understand that ranking well for one term in one country doesn’t mean that it will work well in all countries or regions. You must optimize locally and build content and user experience precisely for that local audience.
#4 Respect the Relevance
Remember Relevance Matters, that’s Google’s age-old philosophy. Google uses on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and visitor behavior to measure relevance. RankBrain (Google’s 3rd most important ranking factor!) core competency is to measure and ascertain relevance and user satisfaction.
Meet each market’s unique needs, don’t just copy and paste across country pages and language and remember your global market has unique needs!
#5 Build Trust in Each Market
You might be a Rockstar in one region, your products are sold out like hotcakes, you are on magazine covers from coast to coast in that region but in other regions, no one knows who you are!
In a new region, you have to build a brand from scratch. You’ll have to invest in brand awareness and building trust with your local market. If you had a few customers in the past from a given region, reach out to them for reviews.
#6 Take Your NAP Seriously
Your business Name, Address and Phone number tell the search engine who you are. inconsistency in your NAP confuses the search engines with conflicting information and devolves your chances of ranking in search results. While competing in the global scenario you wanna make sure that search engines know who you are!
#7 Show Some Love to Local SEO
Building your brand to match the unique needs and behaviors of each market is important. The more you can appeal to each specific region, the more relevant your content will be to the users who find it—and the most Google will see that you care.
Get listed in local directories, get featured in local media, get support from local influencers, and other proven local search engine optimization tactics.
#8 Analyze your Competition
It is important as it tells you who you are competing with, what trends to follow for each market, opportunities, and much more!
You can monitor backlinks to figure out who among your competitors already ranks for your target keywords. Plus, you can discover the sources of backlinks these competitors have and their rankings on search engines.
Conclusion
SEO has come a long way; it is not just about ranking in one country. As a business owner, you have no choice but to think of it from a global perspective as the majority of your website visitor comes from a variety of countries. The opportunities are plentiful that you can enjoy from having a global SEO strategy.
Everything you have done for a local business can be scaled to make way for a global company only the tactics and resources are on a bigger, wide-spread, and international level. The process of International SEO optimizes the website in such a way that search engines would easily identify the targeted country, specific language, and content for visitors in different geographical areas.
Author Bio:
Kshitij is a digital marketer and owner of a Dintellects Solutions. With more than 10 years of experience in the digital marketing industry, he loves blogging on seo & digital marketing and shares his ideas, views on how to market a business.