As of this writing, there are about two billion websites on the internet. To put that in perspective, if you visited each website for just one second each, it would still take you more than sixty-three years to visit them all. In an ocean that gigantic, how do you get customers directed to your website? Search engine optimization is a powerful tool that helps your website make contact with potential customers. There are many techniques you can use to make sure your site shows up higher in search engine rankings. Read on to learn how to get the fastest SEO results and grow your organic website reach.

Create a Target Customer

One of the first steps you should take when you’re trying to improve your SEO is creating a target customer. Your target customer will be the person you direct your website towards. You’ll want to be as specific as possible when creating this target customer so you can imagine you’re writing to them when you create new web content.

Think about what job your target customer holds, what level of education they have, and how old they are. Figure out what age and gender they are, think about what hobbies they have, and where they like to hang out. Then, determine which websites and social media profiles they’re checking on. It can be helpful to come up with a name for this target customer, so you can keep them in mind when you’re creating your content.

Start a Blog

If your website doesn’t already have a blog, it’s a great idea to start one to improve your SEO. For SEO techniques to work best, they need to be employed across a lot of different content. A blog is a great way to generate plenty of content for your site while also encouraging customers to check in regularly to see what’s new.

Use your blog as a place to talk about topics your customers may be interested in learning more about. Promo new products, advise about how to use current products and advertise upcoming sales and special deals. Highlight excellent staff members and tell the story of your company, all while increasing your search engine rankings.

Comment on Other Blogs for Fastest SEO Results

While it’s important to post your own blog content, it’s also a good idea to get involved in the larger blogosphere. The stronger your connection with reputable websites, the more credibility Google will give your web page. One great way to strengthen those connections is to comment on other blog posts.

Keep an eye on blog posts from leading businesses in your industry. Try to comment regularly on these so the people running the blog page will start to notice your presence. This can lead them to come to check out and comment on your blog, further increasing your page’s reputation.

Optimize Your Keywords for Fastest SEO Results

Keyword optimization is one of the core pillars that you’ll build your blog strategy on. Search engines look for pages that relate most closely to what their users are searching for. If your page includes the search term that the user used, there’s a greater likelihood that it will be placed at the top of the page.

When you’re creating blog posts and website pages, pick a specific keyword that you’ll make the focus of that page. You can use different online tools to figure out which specific combination of words gets searched most often. For instance, people may search “best kitchen knives” far more often than “what kitchen knife to buy;” if you use the former keyword, your page will show up more often in search engine results.

Use Meta Information for Fastest SEO Results

While it is crucial to focus on the public side of your web pages (your blog content, your images, etc.), you also need to pay attention to the meta-information on your page. This information is invisible, encoded into your web page. But search engines use that meta information as a factor when determining result rankings.

Make sure your blog pages always have descriptions that include your targeted keywords. When you add an image to your page, put a short description of what it shows in the description area. Make sure your URL for the page also includes the keywords you’re targeting on that page.

Focus on Quality Content for Fastest SEO Results

One of the best ways you can increase traffic to your site is by making sure it’s filled with quality content. You want posts and pages that your customers will refer back to again and again. You also need to make sure your content answers questions that your clients are searching for.

When you’re trying to decide on what blog posts to write, think back to that target customer you created. Think about what kinds of questions they would have about your industry and what sort of content they would enjoy seeing. Also, look at competitors’ pages and do some market research to help guide these blog topic decisions.

Link to Your Site for Fastest SEO Results

When you’re creating blog posts and web pages, it’s a good idea to link to other pages within your website. This accomplishes two things; first of all, it keeps customers moving through your website. If there’s a hyperlink on a topic they’re interested in, they may move on to other pages within your site rather than leaving after they finish reading the first article.

Linking to other pages in your site also helps to establish you as a greater expert in your field. The more you can interlink your articles, the more search engines see you as more authoritative. Since more authoritative sites get higher rankings, interlinking can help to bump you up in the list of search results and bring in more traffic.

Link to Reputable Outside Sites

Linking back to your own site is important, but search engines also want to see that you’re getting your information from reliable sources. One of the best ways to do this is to link to reputable outside sites. These should not be competitor sites, but they should be reputable sources related to your industry.

If you use any statistics in your blog posts or on your website, link to the source you pulled those from. Also, try to link to tangential topics that your customers may be interested in reading. You should aim to put two to four external links in all your blog posts, depending on how long your blog post is.

Request Links to Your Site for Fastest SEO Results

Another great way to grow your website traffic is to have other sites in your industry link back to your website. Ideally, you want this to happen organically as a result of your content quality. If you’re creating reputable, relevant, high-quality content, other businesses in your industry will begin using your site as an external link on their website.

You can also be more active in getting links to your site on other industry sites. If you have a connection with other businesses in your industry, someone who manages a growing website, or even someone who has a successful blog, reach out to them. Ask them to link to your website in some of their posts, and offer payment or a trade to facilitate this linking.

Use Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool to grow your company’s reputation and lead people back to your site. Almost 70 percent of American adults use Facebook, and 37 percent use Instagram. Having access to this large segment of the population is incredibly powerful when you’re trying to direct people back to your website.

Set up social media pages for your business and use them to keep your customers engaged and up to date on what’s happening with your company. Interact with customers, post updates about your company, highlight different staff members and promote events and sales. Of course, use your social media platform to promote each blog post you publish and link back to your website.

Pay Attention to Data for Fastest SEO Results

Your company marketing efforts should always be guided by solid data from your industry. Without good business intelligence, you’re guessing about what customers respond to, what they like, and how they access your business. Your company doesn’t have time to reinvent the wheel and figure out a good marketing strategy by trial and error.

Keep a close eye on your site analytics and use the data you find there to guide your future efforts. If you post a blog about a certain topic and it performs well, put out another post on that same topic, and see how it performs. Pay attention to where people go on your site from certain pages, and if a certain page on your site isn’t getting a lot of traffic, take a look into why that might be.

Ask for Reviews for Fastest SEO Results

One other great way to grow your website’s reputation is to have customer reviews on your site. For one thing, these will show potential new customers that working with you is a good idea. But for another, it shows search engines that you are a legitimate business with real customers who interact with your site.

Give your customers incentives to leave reviews on your website. Maybe you offer them a discount off their next purchase when they leave a review, or maybe you throw in a fun freebie with their next order if they leave a review. Even if they leave a negative review, you’ll have an opportunity to address that pain point and improve that customer’s experience.

Optimize Your Landing Pages for Fastest SEO Results

Your landing pages are the pages customers land on the first time they visit their site. Landing pages can include your home page, blog posts you’ve linked to on your site, pages where you give information about your products or even your about page. It’s crucial that your landing pages are optimized to lead customers further into your site.

Think of your landing page as your company’s handshake to new visitors – it needs to be beautiful, easy to navigate, and useful. Make sure it has a clear call to action at the end of the page, inviting viewers to engage with your site further. Also, make sure you optimize this page for a relevant keyword with good search rankings.

Get Mobile-Friendly for Fastest SEO Results

Last year, mobile site traffic hit a new high, with more than 52 percent of web traffic coming from mobile devices. People do everything on their phones these days – check social media, look up restaurant information, order products, and read blogs. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile browsing, you’re losing more than half of your audience from the jump.

Make sure your site has a flexible layout that can conform to different sizes of phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Links should be easy to click, and menu navigation should be seamless. If customers have to zoom and scroll around your site to make it work, they’re not going to stick around for more than a second or two.

Use Good Graphics for Fastest SEO Results

A picture may not be worth a thousand words in search engine optimization, but it goes a long way with your customers. Many people are visual learners, and it can be hard to sift through an entire paragraph or blog posts to find the information you’re looking for. Putting infographics on your page can keep customers engaged and improve your SEO rankings.

Anytime you’re presenting hard data as part of a web page or article, try to create an infographic to go along with it. Make these graphics colorful and beautiful, since this will help keep your visitors engaged. The more visitors enjoy viewing your web page, the more likely they’ll be to visit again, and the higher your search engine rankings will be.

Get More Visitors To Your Website

Search engine optimization is a powerful tool for bringing customers into your site from a sea of two billion websites. Make sure you focus on keywords and visual appeal on each of your pages and get your site interlinked with other reputable websites as much as possible. Build a mobile-friendly site, and pay attention to the data you’re getting to guide you moving forward.

If you’d like to get the fastest SEO results possible, check out the rest of our site at ROI Amplified. We are a full-service digital marketing agency specializing in custom digital marketing solutions. Set up a free consultation today and start improving your web design, PPC campaigns, SEO, marketing automation, and more.