If you’re a marketing director or digital marketing manager, it’s your responsibility to develop and maintain a website that reflects your brand. It’s also your job to ensure that customers—and prospects looking for the products and services you offer—find your site when they’re searching online.
Therein lies the power of search engine optimization or SEO. It’s the practice of setting up your website, creating content, and strategically collaborating with other websites to rank well in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). SEO empowers you to position your content in front of people actively searching out information related to your products and services through Google, Bing, and other search engines.
Who among us doesn’t want or need people to easily find our business online? When you consider that 81% of people research a brand online before making a purchase, it’s clear we should all prioritize SEO.
Read on to learn more about why SEO is essential to any business marketing effort and the strategies you should be working with your team or agency to implement in 2023.
SEO Benefits
SEO is among the most cost-effective and essential marketing strategies because it targets users actively looking for your products and services. It offers a host of value-added benefits.
Free high-quality website traffic
While developing a search-friendly website, researching, and creating Google-friendly content requires some ongoing investment, the cost per acquisition of qualified visitors to your website is effectively $0. Compared to pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-acquisition (CPA), pay-per-impression (CPM), or other paid marketing strategies, SEO can deliver a consistent stream of ongoing traffic without incremental costs.
Access to large audiences
SEO can help attract anyone intending to buy or gather information about your product or service. Traditional marketing focuses on customer personas and demographics and speaks directly to those audiences. SEO can help you expand that circle by creating in-depth resources that those personas will find valuable and positioning them so that search engines will surface them to your audience.
Public perception/brand awareness
A well-structured SEO strategy can help increase your brand visibility as online searches lead visitors to your website. Forbes reports, “A site that ranks high on search engine results pages is typically considered high-quality and trustworthy by search engines, and this, in turn, boosts the credibility of your business.”
How SEO works
According to HubSpot, SEO works by “improving and adding content to your site, increasing your site speed, and researching keywords to help your site rank even higher.” In simple terms, a successful SEO strategy answers the question: What does Google want from me? Ultimately, Google’s rules may change, but its mission remains the same. To present the most relevant content that best answers the queries people are searching for. Google wants people to return repeatedly, relying on the search engine for the accurate, most up-to-date information they want and need most.
By developing your website with Google’s ranking factors in mind and writing original, in-depth content your audience needs, you will align with what Google wants to offer its users. As a result, you’ll have a better shot at earning a top-ranking position.
White hat: What Google wants you to do
So, how do you structure your content to earn a higher search engine ranking? Our resident SEO expert Josh Walsh sums it up like this:
“Fundamentally, content is still king. Search engines like Google want to offer users the best answer to their search queries from an authoritative source. This means you need to be a verifiable expert on the topic and produce quality content you are uniquely qualified to write about. (Original research)
With rampant misinformation spreading online, Google has made significant investments in verifying the authoritativeness of the author and organization to rank the highest quality content, not just the best ‘ SEO-worthy’ content.
Further, Google also wants users to have a good experience on your website, so they require your website to meet their technical standards for speed, display, and accessibility.”
Avoid: Tricking Google to rank well
Playing whack-a-mole to try to trick or respond to Google’s latest algorithm changes can be exhausting and, often, damaging. Your reputation with Google is vital to ranking well, and nothing hurts that reputation more than trying to ‘game the algorithm’ to trick them into ranking you well. Instead, focus on aligning your interest with Google’s by creating original, high-quality content.
Content Strategy
Start by using Google as your customer would: Identify key search terms you use that would be relevant to your product or service. Pay attention to “People Also Ask” and “Related Searches” on the SERPs. Create a spreadsheet, or list, of potential search queries.
For each search query you identified in your list, look at who currently ranks well for those terms. Can you produce better content? Are they in your weight class? Are you equally or higher authority than the existing author?
Also, pay attention to any patterns you see in the type of results Google is giving you back. Google tries to understand the “search intent” behind the query to serve the user the best results. Some queries are more likely to rank e-commerce shopping pages than product reviews, for example. If you recognize a mismatch between what content you want to write and the type of content Google thinks people want, you may need to adapt your keyword research to find a better fit.
This research step is the most critical part of the process. Otherwise, you risk spending time and money creating content that would never have a shot. At first, you will likely encounter search results that are too competitive for you. For example, if you are a local independent dietician, it would be tough to rank well for “Heart Health.” Those rankings will go to high-authority organizations, like hospitals and universities.
But this research has given you a good starting point. Your next step is to research related niche topics, known in the industry as “long tail keywords.” While you may not be able to rank well for “Heart Health,” keyword phrases like “Are avocados healthy for people with heart disease” may be far better for you.
Once you’ve identified keywords to target, you can prepare your content. And while there isn’t a winning formula to follow 100% of the time, there are three aspects to keep in mind:
- The main headline. Your headline should create some curiosity about your article to entice someone to click to learn more. Google measures how often people choose your article. Those that are clicked more often move up in the rankings.
- The opening paragraph. You should lead the article with 2-3 sentences of factual information that immediately answer the search query. This gives you a chance at winning a featured snippet, where Google features your answer on Google’s search results directly above all the rankings. (“Position Zero”)
- Create content full of in-depth research with citations. The primary goal of the content is to answer the search query and then justify why your answer is correct. To do this, connect your content to other sources of authority which back up your answer. For example, in our article about avocado heart impacts, we would lead with our answer that yes, avocados are heart-healthy food, but then go deeper and explain nutritional claims about avocados and how their makeup affects your heart. Next, justify those claims by excerpting data from medical journals and citing the original source.
Measuring your rankings
Google’s search results are more sophisticated today than they were years ago. Each search result page is tailored to the person performing the search based on the information Google has profiled about them. Two people making the same search query will often see different results.
Further, Google search results are not just a simple list of resulting articles anymore: There are featured snippets, video results, image packs, and paid advertising spots.
Knowing if you are “winning” with your SEO efforts can be challenging. Don’t bother with searching the queries for yourself, as your results may not be indicative of what others see. Instead, rely on analytics tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and similar tools from other search engines to identify where your traffic is coming from.
By prioritizing content based on your keyword research, you’ll have an excellent chance to earn traffic from your search term and similar searches across other search products.
Risks
Google is famous for changing its algorithm frequently (multiple times per day!). It can feel like a chore to keep on top of what is working best.
While there is value in keeping up with these changes as best you can (Google usually doesn’t announce what changes they’ve made), it shouldn’t be of huge concern to you.
Google is changing its algorithm to improve the results for users. That means they are changing to make sure they are identifying the best content to rank well. Most often, these updates are more about lowering the rankings or delisting content, which is gaming the system.
You don’t need to sweat too much about these changes if you aren’t trying to trick Google into ranking well. The approach we’ve outlined here aligns your interest with Google’s, which means the algorithm changes should work to your benefit over time.
That said, Google is a giant automated system, and it’s far from perfect. In reality, algorithm updates sometimes mess things up, especially after a change occurs. But over time, the trend is clear — high-quality, research-based content written by people with verifiable authority increase rankings.
Key areas of focus for SEO in 2023
Despite ever-changing algorithm rules, you should pay attention to two main aspects of SEO at the managerial level: on-page and off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO refers to things you can control about your website. It includes technical aspects related to the development of the website, like how fast your website responds, if it’s mobile-friendly and if it meets accessibility best practices. Google provides a tool to measure this, called Core Web Vitals which ranks your website’s technical quality on a scale of 0-100. If you score below 70 in any category, you should work with a developer to improve your infrastructure.
These technical factors are critically important. If your website does not perform well on Core Web Vitals, then nothing else you do will have much of an impact. The top-ranking websites in 2023 will score 90 or better. Even if you have the best content on the internet for your topic, if your website does not pass Google’s test, you won’t rank well.
On-page SEO also includes your content and internal linking structure: the words and images you use on your website and how users navigate from page to page. This impacts what Google knows about you and how “deeply” the Googlebot “crawls” your website to learn about you.
Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO is everything outside of your website. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this has the most significant impact on your rankings. Your reputation with Google determines if they consider you an authority—and it’s that authority that determines how well your content ranks.
But, after years of abuse and trickery, Google no longer puts any weight on what you say about your credibility. Your reputation and authority are based on what other people say about you. And that’s where off-page SEO becomes important.
Essentially, this comes down to collaborating with other authorities in your area and earning links from those authorities back to the relevant content on your website. Your reputation is uplifted based on these links you earn.
Not all links are equal. In our Avocado Heart Health example, a link from a major university heart study would be extremely valuable. At the same time, a link from an unestablished food blogger would carry far less weight. Links from the wrong places can even harm your reputation because of black hat link trading strategies that were popular years ago.
The best strategy for earning these links is simply following our recommended content strategy: Write about topics you are an authority on with in-depth, original research. When you do that, others will link to you because it adds value to their content.
You can implement some strategies to encourage more of these linking opportunities. For example, you could become a resource for journalists. When a media outlet—say the New York Times, for instance—cites you in an article and links back to your website, Google will give your website a reputation boost based on the credibility you’ve earned from NYT. The same happens when you serve as a source for information shared on social media—your own and reputable media outlets and other brands.
To engage on-page and off-page SEO in one cohesive effort, Forbes advises: “To make the most of your SEO efforts, allocate some of your time to reviewing the content on higher ranking sites within your niche, and aim to write content that’s better than theirs. Then, share your content on your social platforms.”
Special Considerations for 2022
As you align your SEO strategy to increase your ranking, seek to be the authority, not just merely repurposing content from other outlets. As we close out Q4 2022 and look ahead to 2023, here are trending SEO practices that deal with search rankings that should be on your radar:
Your Money, Your Life (YMYL)
If you’re in a space dealing with money or health, your authority matters more today than ever before. Google recognizes the real, life-changing consequences of getting health or financial advice from the wrong people. And as such, until you are a highly verified authority in that space, Google will not include you in the results for these YMYL queries. Some health topics on Google are completely curated to avoid the spread of misinformation.
In these cases, look towards longer tail keywords, and double down on your efforts to demonstrate your authority and research.
Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness (EAT)
As YMYL has proven to work well in the health and financial sectors, Google has begun applying similar changes across all topics. Therefore, emphasize your authority and expertise in your content strategy: We’re starting to see long-held #1 search positions fall because someone with more authority has published on that topic. Websites hailed for their authority or expertise gain the top spots in search engine results.
Website technical best practices
We mentioned the importance of scoring well on Core Web Vitals earlier—and its significance remains so going into 2023. Sites that will dominate the Google search rankings in 2023 will be among the fastest websites we’ve seen in the history of the Internet.
Many websites today do not perform well enough to score well, and content companies are racing to increase their scores to keep and earn more rankings. This is causing a bit of a modern-day gold rush to take over top-earning search results.
Beyond Core Web Vitals, other technical implementations help you rank well. These include semantic markup, which follows the schema.org markup standard; a sitemap.xml which gives crawling instructions to Googlebot; meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1 AA); and configuration of Google Search Console, where Google will provide you with reports about your website’s performance in the SERPS.
Google Local Business Listings (where relevant)
For local businesses, ranking well on Google means showing up on the sidebar of local business recommendations, on Google Maps, and on review websites like Google Reviews. These search rankings are more based on the location of the person searching than on your content.
Searching for “Chinese restaurants” on Google will bring up Google Business listings for restaurants nearby in the page’s sidebar. You will want to set up and optimize a Google My Business profile for your business to ensure you are included in those results.
To help drive a higher ranking in your local market, experts offer these tips:
- Be consistent with your company name and address.
- Use a local phone number.
- Include your tracked and main number.
- Keep your hours of operation updated.
- Write a business description.
- Properly categorize your business.
A final thought on SEO.
Successful marketing lies in the ability to be found by your customers or prospects and then make meaningful connections with them. Creating genuinely helpful content for your users will make your products and services more inviting.
Reach out to your representative at Shamrock to have our SEO team take a look at your website and make sure you are ready for 2023.
