SEO Growth Hacking Techniques to Scale Your Business You need more than just a great website.
By Ehsan Jahandarpour Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
In today's competitive market, it is almost impossible to succeed in digital marketing without having a well-visited website. Online business accounts for a huge chunk of revenue theses days, and in many niches, buyers prefer to purchase the product with either a cheaper price or best value option. If you want to get a piece of the pie, it is not enough to rely on a website with a nice interface. You must focus on growth hacking strategies, and make yourself visible to Google.
A while ago, a relatively new profession was conceived -- search engine optimization (SEO). Today it's evolved and has become a necessity for every online business. SEO empowers website owners to rank better in Google and generally, make more money in the digital landscape.
Related: 6 Ways to Boost Sales With AdWords Expanded Text Ads
There are lot of people who use the wrong approach, concentrating on the "publish and pray approach." But there are a few who understand that like other professions, SEO is highly technical and must be implemented with care. One of the biggest challenges is keeping up with Google's algorithm changes. The internet as a whole is constantly evolving, and great SEO efforts are needed for a webmaster to keep up with Google's everchanging processes.
In this article, I will walk you through three essential areas to help increase your growth rate without spending a penny on ads.
Take care of the technical aspects of SEO.
Search engine optimization needs to be part of your plan from the very beginning as there are numerous things that can go wrong with your website, preventing you from running a successful internet business.
First, you need to check your robots.txt file and robots META tags. Both of these are used to restrict Google's access to certain files. Occasionally, webmasters may add certain pages that shouldn't be on that list. As a result, some of the articles you have will not be indexed.
Your website architecture and XML sitemap need to be flawless. Google robots, or crawlers, will go through your web pages from time to time, and they need to have full access to certain resources. This is where technical prowess comes into play. Your website's architecture must be designed to improve customer experience and offer easy navigation. Otherwise, both customers and Google may not notice some of your content.
Make sure to implement customer journey optimization strategies, and ensure that every piece of content on your website is oriented toward end users. Regardless of their device -- desktop or mobile -- users should be able to surf your landing pages easily and quickly.
Now, let's talk about your domain as a whole. Your website needs to be registered in the country where you are conducting business. To achieve better results in local search, you should be thinking of having local domain names like .co and .uk.
On the other hand, if you are a multi-national company, or if your services are provided solely through the internet, you can go for root domain names. Everyone battles to get a .com domain, but you can choose any combination. Ranking in Google requires many other factors, and your domain name doesn't really play a huge role in that.
One other point worth mentioning: trying to setup a dual language website may seem appealing at first, but if you are a new blogger, it is perhaps best if you start with one language.
Related: 8 Essential Growth-Hacking Tools to Build Your Business
Invest in keyword research.
Every single blog post has to be strategically created. It has to be focused around one particular term or a phrase, otherwise known as the keyword. This keyword is exactly what your users are typing in google to find you. Your effort should be towards enhancing your content with the right keyword and appearing on the first page when users search for specific keywords. Obviously, the higher your success rate in content marketing strategies, the higher your traffic and position in Google will be.
Before creating content, you have to find just the right keyword around which you will build your content. There is no reason for you to pursue keywords with low traffic or high difficulty. Instead, you will have to find phrases that have medium traffic and low difficulty or medium difficulty and high traffic. The entire procedure can be done by laymen by using Google keyword planner. General rule of thumb -- focus on keywords that refer to your product, and use similar keywords to support your main objectives.
Blogs and great content matters alot.
The era of publishing great content and conquering the world is long gone. In my opinion, great content is not king anymore because there is plenty of great content on the internet, and the land of SEO cannot have that many kings. The secret relies on other factors like content marketing, content promotion strategies and other growth hacking secrets.
One of the best ways to publish and promote great content and increase your conversion rate is to have a blog. Once you set up your blog and craft your content, you must focus on building links. In other words, you have to create visual content -- either in a form of videos or articles -- which will then be shared by other bloggers on their own websites. In a way, this represents the passing of authority from other sources to your own website. A backlink is a sign of trust from other professionals within your industry. Regardless of the products or services that you are offering, link building is a strategy that will improve your website ranking.
However, you should be very selective when you want to choose a topic for your content. Always craft your content with your potential buyers and influencers in mind. You can setup a lead magnet and convert your vsitors to leads when they land on your blog. You can then engage with your prospective customers, and send them to your product page.
Related: How to Create a Lead Magnet That Attracts Visitors and Converts Customers
When it comes to content marketing strategies, there are certain rules to be followed. Needless to say, all your articles and videos have to be somewhat connected to whatever you're offering. Your content needs to be informative, relevant and unique. Don't forget to give reference to popular websites and influencers who add value to your product.
That being said, you will have to promote the content. You can improve your SEO by focusing on longer content with lots of images, links and interesting formatting and getting more links and social shares.
Obviously, email campaigns are a good way to attract visitors to your blog and increase conversion rates. On the other hand, social media is a great way to engage your potential audience. Please bear in mind that different platforms work for different business, and it is only through conducting proper research and experiments that you can find the best platform to grow your business faster than your rivals.
