Search engine optimization (SEO) looks a lot different these days. Many of the fundamental principles that help you gain better rankings are still relevant.
But today’s SEO professional must consider new aspects of their clients’ businesses to ensure long-term success.
The following will highlight some of the ways you can change your approach to your SEO strategy, the questions you should seek to answer, and the benefits you can gain through their implementation.
The SEO You Know
The typical SEO approach starts with the audit. This is where you review a business website to understand what elements might be corrected for improved performance.
The audit is a great opportunity to see the possibilities for developing a more effective strategy.
In the past, the SEO was primarily concerned with keyword optimization. This allowed them to develop content that targets these keywords and generate relevant links along the way. But many saw this as a quick fix.
In today’s market, this approach isn’t enough, and it fails to take advantage of many of the tools that are available.
A New Perspective
Taking a new perspective ensures that your SEO strategy is comprehensive and meets the needs of your business.
The SEO professional of today must have the information to evolve the methods used to increase and maintain search engine rankings.
This requires a full understanding of the current needs of the business. You can get clear on this by asking some key questions that are vital to almost any business:
What does the business want to accomplish?
What marketing goals are the most important right now?
What are the short- and long-term goals of the business?
Digging deeper into the business improves the auditing process and prevents it from only addressing issues related to tools and tactics.
Instead, the SEO must focus on needs, goals, and strategy.
Putting it Into Practice
The first step to putting this new approach into practice is to decide how an SEO can maximize the tools that are available to the business in light of the answers to these questions. This allows you to assess the possibilities and create a priority to list from where to begin.
You must recognize that underneath all of the data, analytics, and rankings are real customers. The first step is to understand these customers throughout their different segments.
Certain customers will respond to specific keywords or content. Understanding these segments allows you to target each one accordingly. This includes those individuals who are most likely to influence a given segment through sharing information or linking to your product or service.
From there, you can begin to market the content in a way that falls in line with the information you’ve gathered on business goals and customer interests.
This content can come in a variety of forms and be shared through social media, email, or other distribution channels.
Finally, you must learn from feedback. It’s not enough to implement this strategy. It’s essential that you also explore why something worked (or didn’t).
This is the new world of the SEO. The tactics and tools that worked in developing SEO strategies of the past must now be developed with a new perspective. This means that businesses must consider their goals and customer behaviors.
What new approaches to your SEO strategy are you using to increase your search engine rankings. Let us know how they’ve worked for you in the comments section.
