Over the years, SEO has gone through several major evolutions.
In the early days of the internet, SEO often meant keyword stuffing and including spammy links just to try and build page authority. The result was a lot of useless content and search results that weren’t all that useful to readers. Eventually, search engines, such as Google and Bing, began to crack down on these poor practices. Subsequently, websites are now held to a much higher standard when it comes to what they publish and how they are awarded first page rankings.
While SEO doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing it did ten years ago, it is still a vital component of any comprehensive inbound marketing plan. Today, the focus is on well-organized sites, quality content and keywords that are organically incorporated into the text. At Lead Harbor, we can help you make the most of existing SEO tools and make sure that your website adheres to the latest SEO best practices. With the right SEO techniques, you can improve your rankings and online visibility.
Keyword Research
Conducting thorough keyword research will provide you with valuable insights into long tail keywords and phrases that customers are typing into search boxes. Understanding this aspect of customer behavior will allow you to run more targeted campaigns and perfect your website content and other marketing materials. While more general keywords may be more popular, they won’t offer that same value or conversion rates.
Correctly utilizing keywords will allow you to effectively grow your business even in a highly competitive online business world. At Lead Harbor, we can conduct the keyword research process, make recommendations about the best words and phrases to target based on your market and help you implement these strategies throughout all your content. Our experts are up-to-date on best practices and ready to help you take advantage of the power of keywords and SEO.
Blogging
Regularly publishing well-written and purpose driven blog posts is another key aspect of search engine optimization for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, search engines will reward sites that are constantly adding new material. This sends a signal that the site is active and adding to the current conversation.
Blogs also give you an opportunity to use keywords, meta data and image tags and other SEO tools to demonstrate that you are concerned with making your website accessible and compliant with search engine standards. The more you are able to use your blog posts to implement SEO best practices, the more search engines will reward you with higher rankings. This will allow you to gain organic traffic without having to invest in PPC campaigns and other paid marketing tools.
Link Building
Earning quality links from major news sites and other respected authorities is another key aspect of SEO. Creating valuable and informative posts will encourage people to share your links and refer to your posts within their own content. This allows you to gain traction as a reliable resource, which will quickly translate into higher search engine rankings and more organic traffic.
In the past, businesses would simply buy link building opportunities and pay to have their site listed. Today, this black hat practice can result in penalties that completely remove you from any relevant search results. The key to is to create content worth sharing and nurture relationships with authoritative sites, bloggers and industry leaders. At Lead Harbor, we can help you do just that and make sure that you are adhering the latest SEO guidelines and taking full advantage of every link earning opportunity.