The Eight-Step SEO Strategy That Guarantees Sales

The Eight-Step SEO Strategy That Guarantees Sales

Dealing with SEO can be frustrating for a lot of business owners. That’s why I decided to put together a short guide to help you with SEO in 2019.

If you want one definitive guide that you can use to reliably boost your SEO, so that you get more leads coming to your website, then this is it.

I say that this guide will guarantee sales because if you are getting more people onto your website who are interested in your products and services, you will make more sales. Good SEO is one of the best ways to get leads for most businesses.

You must learn how to use RankBrain to your advantage
RankBrain measures the way users interact with search results. These results are then ranked accordingly. According to Google, RankBrain is the third most important ranking factor for SEO.

How does it work?
When you type in a query, you will be presented with a list of results. If you click the 3rd item in the result, and read it completely, Google will take note of that 3rd item and give it a ranking boost.

Then, let’s say you search the same query, and you click the 1st item in the result. However, you did not read the article and abandoned the page after a few seconds. RankBrain will notice that behavior. If this happens a few more times, Google will demote it from the #1 spot.

We now know that RankBrain tracks how long someone stays on your page (Dwell Time) and the percentage of people that pick you from the result list (Click Through Rate).

Google uses Dwell Time as a ranking signal. It measures the times when someone clicks on the page and how long they stay there. The average Dwell Time, according to SearchMetrics, is 3 minutes and 10 seconds.

Time spent on your page means the reader likes your content. Being liked by readers deserves a boost in ranking from Google’s perspective.

What about Click Through Rate? Click Through Rate refers to the number of times you are picked from the results list.

The higher your CTR is, the better ranking boost you get. It’s only logical that you get the top spot if you get clicked on a lot, right? And, if no one is clicking you, it’s not surprising if you get penalized. The question is, how do you boost your organic CTRs? This will tell you how. (link)

Become a CTR Master
Improving your SEO game requires mastery of Click Through Rates, not only because of RankBrain but because Google is favoring those with Answer Boxes, Ads, Carousels, “People also ask” sections, and others.
If you want to stand out in the SERP, your content must be highly-clickable or you’ll get ignored.
This video will help you become a CTR Master using the Click Magnet Method.

Rank Content in the Featured Snippet
More than 10% of all search results have a featured snippet. That’s when a part of the article or piece of content is featured on the search results page. It gives off the signal to browsers that your website is the authority on the subject.

Having a piece of content with the Featured Snippet gives your brand great positioning and makes it far more likely people will click on your website rather than the results below it.

In fact, the Featured Snippet steals a lot of clicks from the standard top spot. Here’s how you can get your content featured as a snippet:

1. Look for Featured Snippet opportunities – To do this, the first thing you need to do is identify the keywords that you already rank for and the keywords that have a featured snippet. Almost all the featured snippets are from the first page. You have no chance of getting a spot in the Featured Snippet if you don’t belong in the Top 10.
2. Create a “snippet bait” – This is a block of content, usually 40 to 60 words, created for the purpose of getting a spot in the Featured Snippet.
3. Format content for other types of Featured Snippets – A paragraph snippet is the best snippet bait. The other types of snippets are list snippets and table snippets. Of the three though, the paragraph snippet is the most used. If you are going to use the list snippet, use H2 or H3 sub-headers for each item on your list, which Google will pull and include in the Featured Snippet. If you want to use the Table Snippet, make sure that Google can easily pull data from your table.

Comprehensive and In-Depth Content
Google used to analyze a page by counting how many times a keyword is used. It checks if the keyword is in the title tag, URL, Image ALT text, Description Tag and H1 Tag. Today, Google still looks at this, but it also focuses on the context.

Google wants to show users the best result possible and the “best” isn’t always the one that has a lot of keywords. The “best” is the page that discusses a topic thoroughly. Through an in-depth analysis of content, Google can give a searcher everything he needs in a single source.

How do you write in-depth content?
First, make sure that your content is at least 2,000 words and that you cover everything there is about the topic. Today, long content outranks short articles.
Comprehensive content has authority. It should have a decent amount of social media shares, backlinks, and pageviews. Once you have written your 2,000-word piece, add LSI keywords to it.
These are words and phrases that relate to your topic. Let’s say, you are writing about The Keto Diet, your LSI keywords would be nutrition, macros, protein, recipes, and gains.
There are tools that can help you identify LSI keywords for your article. You may use LSI Graph, Google Keywords Planner or just search-up potential keywords on Google.

Google’s Mobile-First Index
You should know by now that Google considers the mobile version of your site as the “primary” version, even if there are still a few users who search from a desktop. If you haven’t done it yet, it’s high time you optimize your site to make it Mobile-First. Here’s what you should do:

1. Be sure your content looks the same on both desktop and mobile devices. It would be wrong to hide portions of your content in the mobile version, which a lot of sites used to do.
2. Move from M. version to Responsive Design. If you still have a mobile “M” version of your site, you better switch over to responsive design for a better experience for your customers.
3. Make sure that your site is easy to navigate when using a phone or a tablet. Remember that RankBrain measures how long a user stays on your site. If your site is not user-friendly, your ranking will suffer. To know if your site is mobile-optimized, go to Mobile-Friendly test tool to find out.

Video
According to Cisco, 80% of online traffic by 2021 will be online video. This is not something you can afford to miss out on. Here’s how to get started:

1. YouTube – YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine and it continues to grow. A lot of users search on YouTube instead of Google. If you want more traffic from SEO, create content specifically for YouTube. The more you publish SEO-optimized videos on YouTube, the more Google will reward you.
2. Embed videos in your posts. People want to see videos.

Voice Search
You should be searchable via voice because a lot of users prefer doing voice search instead of typing. Google will then give them the answer after they have made their query via voice. Google will pull from one of the top-ranking articles and use that for their answer
Here is what you should do to optimize your content for voice searches:

1. Make sure your content ranks high in the search result. It appears that Google picks from the top three search results when answering voice queries. Aim to be in the top 3 then.
2. Try to get a spot in the Featured Snippet. Google will often use the Featured Snippet to answer voice searches.
3. Include a question in your content – Most of the voice searches are in a question format. Google usually picks a page that contains both the question and the answer.

Content and Links
SEO is largely content and links. If your content is lousy, you will not get links. And, without links, you won’t get the top spot. Content and links are still the top-ranking factors, no matter what else seems new. Top-notch content and links will continue to be the basis of great SEO.

Other Tips

1. Improve your EAT – EAT stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Be an Expert or hire one. Hiring underqualified freelancers to write your content won’t cut it. Google chooses to feature content that is written well. This may be hard to fake when Google starts to use some form of Google Authorship to determine whether an author is an expert of the field he’s writing about or not. Then, be transparent. Have an extensive About Page. Make sure your Contact Page is easy to see. Your content should have references and links to sources.
2. Create visual content – Create lots of visual content, including embeddable images. Embeddable images are images that other sites can put in their content. When they do it, they will usually link it back to you. One embeddable image can result in a considerable number of quality backlinks.
3. Write unique data – Bloggers love data that is unique. Provide them with a statistic, survey or interesting study and you are more likely to get backlinks.
4. Welcome comments – Blog comments help with ranking. Google wants to see that your community is active, and this will trigger a ranking boost.
5. Delete dead pages – Whether you admit it or not, you have pages that have zero value. These are outdated posts, low quality posts, archive pages, duplicate articles, low-performing product pages, and others. A few dead pages are negligible but hundreds of them can affect SEO.
6. Podcasts – Going on podcasts is a great way to build links. The popularity of podcasts continues to grow, and this means more opportunities for exposure.

Bringing it all together
We’ve covered a lot in this article. I wanted to put everything down that I know about successfully using SEO in 2019.
Again, it’s worth saying again, the meat and potatoes of good SEO is backlinks and high-quality content. If you are creating content that your customers are engaging with and enjoying, then that’s what gets 80% of the results.

If you want to make more sales with SEO, and want our help, then head to our contact page and get in touch with the team.