Every business starts from the ground. You don’t start off as this influential figure. While you are still testing the waters, you can apply some SEO tips on your own. In fact, I have listed here: SEO Tips That Are Useful to Any Digital Business.

Usual day in the office.

For businesses owners, adding SEO into the mix is crucial. It remains to be a powerful component in the world of online business, and the best part is that it does not break your budget. I will now list the reasons why SEO optimization should be part of every organization.

1. SEO gives you insights regarding your customers.

• The great thing about SEO is that you get to know a whole lot of information regarding your target audience. Once you use SEO tools, significant data about your customers will be within reach.
• For research alone, there are tools that will tell you what your audience is searching. You will know the popular keywords that the public is looking for online. This will give you a head start on what content to create, what products to manufacture, what things to publish online, and so on.
• According to Scott McGovern, a digital biz expert, he mentioned something about business owners not knowing their audience. He stated that businesses do not have a clear picture of their audience, and they have much relevant data on hand.
• But with SEO, customer data pile up. As time passes by, you get to know your audience more and more. There is no reason not to know their preferences.
• There are FREE keyword tools you can use as well as SEO browser add-ons you can download. The possibilities are endless because you can utilize thousands of paid services or opt to use the free tools if you are still starting.

2. SEO helps you gain more web traffic and higher conversion rates.

• It could more money and revenue for you. So, instead of allocating resources on social media and subscribing to paid ads, you should build an SEO strategy.
• Keep up with the latest updates provided by Google. Starting strategizing on how to drive organic traffic.
• What is organic traffic? This is the web traffic that comes from search engines such as Yahoo!, Bing, Google, and etc.
• To this day, it is 400% effective in converting web visitors compared to other forms like paid or sponsored posts.

3. SEO won’t cost you a dime.

• Of course, there are a multitude of paid subscriptions available online, but there are also free tools as well. SEO can be inexpensive if you utilize free tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
• If you don’t have much money, just invest your time and effort. Surely, Google Analytics will tell you what your web visitors are doing on your site. Meanwhile, Google Search Console will show you what the people searched and they got there.
• For a smooth user experience, be sure to fix any broken links or provide the necessary 404s to guide back to the right direction.

Writing solely for search engines is not the way to go! Remember, Google will penalize websites if found tweaking for mere SEO purposes. Thus, when you are looking for an SEO writer, he or she should be knowledgeable in the field. Because if he or she fails to do the basic rules as stated in part 1, the newly written content will definitely do more harm to your website than bringing in good results.

Read the tips below if you are looking for an effective SEO writer:

4. An SEO writer should know your audience.

This is related to item number 3. Just to reiterate, the designated SEO writer writes should consider the audience first.

Know the following will make the writers efficient in their jobs:

1. Who is the audience?
2. What is considered relevant to this target audience?
3. Lastly, what content is important to them?

The writer must take the time to know the audience, and know what they are searching. How would you know what to write if you don’t know what terms are meaningful to them? This is simply a reminder to create something important your audience. If no one wants to read it, then, don’t bothering publishing it to the world.

Related: Free Keyword Research Tools You Need

5. Knowledgeable on what to do and what not to do.

In SEO writing, there are a lot of factors to consider. There’s no need to be an SEO expert because you will probably hire one. The point is, the writer should be knowledgeable on the current SEO trends. He or she does not need to know everything. Instead, he or she must be familiar.

For example, what are the SEO on-page factors? These are the page titles, meta descriptions, headlines, and etc. The SEO writer should provide an effective page title to a content. The necessary meta description should be able to give an overview on what the page is about. These little things may appear trivial to the ordinary layman. In truth, these are essential in SEO. So, if the writer does not know this basic fact, then, better skip and hire someone else instead.

Related: 5 Ways to Compose Your Meta Description

6. SEO writing will surely cost you money.

High-quality content ain’t cheap! When you hire people to be part of your team of SEO professionals, they won’t be inexpensive. However, it is crucial to invest on the right people and the right services. Your team of writers should be able to understand how to write for both search engines and web visitors.

Moreover, online writing is totally different from traditional writing. For starters, writing for web does not necessarily follow the usual norm. This is an emphasis on the previous 2 tips because at the end of the day, inferior content will more disadvantages than advantages. It may not immediately take effect, but once it does, damage can be irreversible. Once you are on Google’s bad side, it is hard to appeal. Penalties will be imposed and it could mean a drop in web traffic or a drop in rankings!

Related: 6 Bad Link Habits Could Get You Penalized

Previously, I discussed the importance of hierarchy for web crawlers and web visitors. Having an apparent structure helps Google understand your website better. Of course, another benefit would be for humans to effortlessly browse your website, allowing them to purchase items quickly, to read new content easily, and more.

Here are other SEO tips you might find useful for your growing digital business:

3. Formulate content.

SEO is not totally hard to understand. One main factor would be: CONTENT. Whether your business has a global scope or an SME, creating useful content is crucial to your online success.

Content is part of the top SEO trends to follow. For sure, it will be still be relevant in the coming years. What do you need to know about content? Here’s a brief summary:

• Google values the quality of a content more than anything else. Its algorithms are program to find relevant content, and those content that people are search for.
• Make sure that your content coincides with the search terms that people are typing on the different search engines.
• Enhance your page title, meta descriptions, and headlines. The relevant keywords should be prominent on these specific areas.
• Yes, you should optimize your site for Google to easily recognize it. However, at the end of the day, your articles and blogs should appeal to your readers.
• So, avoid keyword abuse. You don’t have to repeat a certain keyword just to achieve a higher website ranking.
• Lastly, do not limit yourself with mere words. Content could also mean images, videos, audios, and other multimedia formats. Mix and match different content types to attract more visitors to your website.

Remember, the type of content you will publish depends on what type of audience you are interested in. It’s important to test different content types, and monitor which ones get more clicks & interactions from your audience.

4. Link ‘em up!

Links could mean internal or external links. You don’t get external links easily as you have to wait for other sites to mention you and provide the necessary links to your site.

However, for starters, you can begin structuring your internal links. When you link related content together, you strengthen the website structure because related pages are grouped together. Avoid creating orphaned content, a type of content that is discontented from your other published content.

Once an orphaned content is out there, it is hard for Google to find its purpose and relevance since it is not linked to anything. Thus, Google will most likely classify it as unimportant and give it a lower page rank.

To put it simply, internal linking achieves 2 things: a) It aids the web crawlers in classifying your content and giving it the proper ranking it deserves.  b) It helps your web visitors in navigation. People won’t have to search for other articles because related blog posts are indicated within the page itself.

5. Don’t forget to delete.

We always think of ways to add something to the website.  We forgot an essential task and that is to delete. Not everything we add is relevant in the long run.

If you find something that is not useful anymore, do not hesitate to delete it. Removing unnecessary things is not only helping pruning essential content. Also, it greatly helps in improving website speed.

Because you have cleared the things that take so much space, the website is easier to navigate and it is faster than ever before.

Signing with an SEO company takes some serious thought. You just don’t go ahead and ink the contract. You need to consider the tips in part 1 and the tips mentioned below.

3. Don’t just search for the “best SEO company.”

The best is NOT automatically Google’s top 1 result. The true top companies are busy improving websites. They have no time to trick people into their false promises. Instead, they let their work do the talking. So, ask people you know because they might just recommend a company that fits you.

Word of mouth is still instrumental in today’s digital age. It could turn a “nobody” into the biggest name of the industry. The best companies usually acquire new clients from their loyal customers. Trust is important in this business, and to be honest, only companies that need new customers will even bother to go for keywords such as “SEO company in Phoenix,” “Best SEO company,” and so on.

Additionally, you can’t trust the “lists” you see all over the internet. For all you know, these companies could have paid their bloggers or influencers to include their products and services on this so-called list of top SEO companies. The truly great SEO agencies won’t have time to pay digital influencers or any prestigious lists as they are busy improving their craft.

4. Go for an SEO company that will monitor the metrics that are important for your business.

Previously, I discussed the importance of setting specific goals. This will help you choose the right company in a sense that you will filter the companies that can fulfill these duties. There is no one sure way of telling this is a good performance indicator. At the end of the day, the metrics to monitor would be dependent on the purpose of your website.

Of course, the purpose of a site that has an established group of customers is totally different from a website that is just starting. Thus, these two websites would be monitoring different sets of performance indicators. A good SEO company should be able to distinguish the current needs of the clients. Here’s a list of key performance indicator (or KPI) to monitor:

• Conversion rate: Do your web visitors become your customers? Are they just mere visitors? What can you do to make them convert?
• Keyword rankings:Which keywords do you monitor and did the rankings improve ever since you hired an SEO agency?
• Google bots: Google lets the bots do the scanning. If Google can’t read and scan the contents of website, it cannot determine if it produces useful information or not.
• Page load time: People prefer fast loading websites. If it takes forever to load, people will automatically leave. No one ever has the patience to wait for more than 5 seconds.

5. Select an SEO company that is able to communicate well.

Of course, these SEO terms can be overwhelming. The KPIs mentioned above can be a bit hard to digest for the general public. No matter how advanced the tools are, if you don’t know what it means, these numbers are still useless.

Whether you website uses a paid service like SEMRush or a free tool like Google Analytics, your SEO company should be able to explain every bit of information reflected on these tools you used. As a business owner, you won’t have the luxury to study all the data present. Thus, it is important to hire a team of SEO professionals that are able to communicate efficiently.

Yes, SEO is important, but choosing the right SEO company is more important.

SEO is not just a “one day” or “two weeks” task. The working relationship could go on for years. Like I said in part 1, this is not a magic potion. Changes in the website won’t happen immediately. Seeing the effects of the optimization could take years. That’s why, you need to find a group of SEO professionals that you can trust and that can truthfully reveal whatever the results are.