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3 Smart SEO Strategies: What Will Make or Break Businesses in 2018

Smart SEO Strategies

As we know, the world of SEO changes on a dime – and most of the time, it’s hard to even keep up-to-date. It’s always imperative to have the best tools at our fingertips at all times to find new opportunities, save time and keep track of how your SEO can be boosted.

It’s always the better choice to want to invest in SEO – especially in the year 2018. If you are looking to take your business to the next level, you better take full advantage and get started. If you have no idea where to begin, no worries – we got you covered. Today we are sharing with you the top three smartest SEO strategies that will either help make or break your business this year. Well, if you are on top of the ball, and are determined, you will see real success. Let’s get started:

1. Using Visual Content

 

SEO isn’t only text-based, it can also include images and videos. Images are just a powerful way to increase engagement. Make sure you are using high-quality and professional taking imagery throughout your content. Not to mention, most people are visual viewers – they would rather see an idea than read a big chunk of words. Images also help to break your content into different sections.

When you use images, it’s important you are ensuring your imagery is search engine friendly. And by that I mean, you are properly naming your images and using the ALT tags to describe your photos. So for instance, if you uploaded a picture of an elephant in Thailand, you include specific information on the picture; like “Feeding the Elephants at a Sanctuary in Phuket, Thailand.” This will allow for the search bots to identify your images and ensure they show up in relevant search queries.

2. Focus on YouTube SEO

As we know, videos are booming in popularity, especially in this upcoming year. YouTube videos rank in top 10 of Google search far more frequently than any other types of videos. With more than 3 billion searches per month, YouTube has become the second most popular search engine people are using, surpassing Bing, Yahoo, and AOL combined. If you start to focus on YouTube SEO, you will not only increase your traffic but can get you onto the first page on Google.

Want to get started? Here are three ways to improve your YouTube SEO:

A. Make your video SEO friendly

  1. Video Title: The filename, the title, the description are all components that affect your rankings. A key tactic is to use your keywords at the start of the title, then add a subheader after a colon to drive clicks. So for instance, you can use, “Video SEO – How to Rank Videos in Google and YouTube” – Video SEO as the main keyword followed by the subheader after the dash. It’s important to note that you are using at least 5 or more words and include a broad target keyword.
  2. Video description: Google’s spiders are what helps to find your content – so while they can’t really read your videos, it’s imperative you include a well-written description to determine what your video is about. So instead of just writing a short and brief description, it is definitely worth writing longer, detailed posts about your video.

B. Make Longer Video

The longer the videos, the better it will do on YouTube. The best rule of thumb is to make your videos at least 5 minutes long.

C. Use better video thumbnails

They say a good first impression can work wonders, right? Well if you have a better video thumbnail, it will help you get more clicks and views. So make a good choice when picking a thumbnail!

Strong thumbnails should tell viewers exactly what the video is about. So for instance, if your video is about how to add images to your website, maybe you want to choose a title thumbnail that describes your image. Plain and simple.

3. Focus on topics instead of keywords

Google’s algorithm has changed over the past years; its objective now is to better understand the intention of the uses: what users expect, what they are looking for, and more specifically, what search results would best help answer their query.

Nowadays, using keyword-focused content will not help you rank on the first page of Google – it’s just not enough. We need to look at the context around them. To sum it up, you must consider what your users are looking for instead of just looking for ways that users can phrase a search query. To help you get started, here are two major things you should consider:

A. Know your target audience

The better you know your niche – their location, age, and likes, the better the content you will create. A helpful way of knowing your target audience is to think and build a detailed buyer persona, and from there you will have a better understanding of the types of topics that matter to your readers.

B. Organize content into themes

For instance, if you run a website about Instagram, you might have three types of readers:

  1. People who want to start an Instagram page
  2. Experienced users who want to learn Instagram tips and tricks
  3. Entrepreneurs who want to use Instagram to build their business

Organizing your content in different themes that cover multiple topics, can help to target each of these types of readers. Use these specific topics below:

  1. How to Use Instagram for Business
  2. How to Optimize Instagram
  3. How to Build Your Instagram Page

These topics are great and are more reader-friendly.

C. Research keywords

Keywords still matter and should not be ignored; after all, it’s how Google spiders find your content. One way to get your content seen is it to use long-tail keywords; when you’re describing your content, make sure you are using at least 4 or more specific words to grab the target audience to your page. A great tool to use to help you with your targeted keywords is SEMRush. SEMRush allows you to identify and analyze the keywords that your competitors are using.

At the end of the day, it’s best to choose quality over quantity. You want to get more conversions from fewer visitors. So focus on long tail keywords and topics that are within your niche.

Conclusion

Other ways to improve SEO in the year 2018 also include guest posting, using backlinks, optimizing for Google Voice, optimizing for page speed, etc. When you use these above strategies, you will see results sooner than later.

All in all, SEO is constantly changing rapidly. If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, it’s best to stay in the loop at all times. Just remember to stay focused on solid content creation, engage with your viewers, and stay updated on simple trends like backlinks, site speed, etc. A little bit of research goes a long way.

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