Search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental in attracting customers to your website. Are you up-to-date with the latest practices that deliver winning SEO results?

As we’ll see, the right SEO strategies can make your business stand out from your competitors and thrive.

Key takeaways:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method that helps your website rank higher than others in response to specific keywords that users enter in search engines.
• Search engine optimization can increase brand awareness, attract local customers and build credibility and trust.
• Global localization is the practice of adjusting a brand’s message, product or service to the local language, customs and culture and is a winning SEO strategy.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can automatically create blog content that’s 99% original. All you have to do is tidy it up and add your personal touch.
• The more you write about a specific topic, the more topically relevant you’ll be and rank higher in search engine results pages (SERP).

What is SEO?

Search engines like Google or Bing will examine every web page they have access to and use an algorithm to catalog the content to deliver the most relevant results to individuals using their engines. SEO (search engine optimization) is a technique that helps your website rank higher than others when users enter specific in those search engines.

There are two types of SEO:

• On-page SEO means optimizing your website in terms of content and technical aspects. This work includes enhancing blog content to highlight specific keywords, filling in meta and alt tags with descriptive words, ensuring pages load quickly and there aren’t any 404 pages.

• • Off-page SEO involves work outside your website to help increase search engine rankings. Off-page SEO includes obtaining high-quality backlinks, guest blogging and using social media and influencer marketing.

Search engine algorithms are continually changing, meaning that SEO techniques need to evolve too.

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Why the right SEO strategy matters

SEO improves the quality and quantity of audiences visiting your website from search engines. It could increase brand awareness, attract local customers and build credibility and trust. Consider these statistics from Hubspot and Backlinko:

• SEO is among the top three most effective channels for acquiring new customers in 2022.
• Organic search is the leading source of website traffic.
• The number one organic result on the search engine results page (SERP) is ten times more likely to receive a click than the one in the number ten spot.
• Moving one spot up in the search results will increase the click-through rate (CTR) by 2.8%.
• The top three Google search results get 54.4% of all clicks.

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5 strategies for winning SEO results

Now that we understand how crucial SEO is in attracting customers, let’s look at the prevailing trends of 2022.

1. Let Google handle the metadata

Today, Google can overwrite meta descriptions and title tags for web pages. You may feel that’s a bit invasive and that your wording is better. There’s an attribute in the body tag called data-nosnippet, which forces Google to respect your meta descriptions. However, a test conducted by Moz (video included below) revealed that adding this attribute resulted in a three percent loss in organic traffic. 

What can we learn from this SEO result? We don’t need to spend so much time crafting metadata for SEO. Google is better at writing them and prefers using its version. 

2. Increase related links

At the bottom of every blog page, article links should appear relating to the topic. Did you know that a slight increase in the number of related links can significantly increase organic traffic?

In a Moz test, a website increased the number of related article links on a blog page from two to four. This small change resulted in an 11% increase in organic traffic to the donor page (i.e., the page where they added the links.) The pages receiving the links didn’t see any noticeable impact on organic traffic.

This test shows that links do more than pass on link equity or page value and authority. Links can be a way to correlate different bits of content together and help algorithms understand your page better. 

3. Localize your website

Global localization means adjusting a brand’s message, product or service to the local language, customs and culture. For example, a picture on a fashion website may feature a racially ambiguous model for the United States. However, it may have an Indian one when users access the website from India.

Does localization matter? One e-commerce website saw a whopping 24% increase in website traffic when it localized its UK for users living in the United States. This result is likely due to American audiences searching for items like “pants” instead of “trousers.”

4. Semi-automate your content creation

Artificial intelligence (AI) impacts every aspect of e-commerce businesses, from customer support to personalized digital experience. Now, AI is available for content creation too. AI tools can automatically create blog content that is 99% original. All you need to do is tidy it up and add your personal touch.

Leverage these solutions to cut down your content creation time and increase the amount of content you publish. As a result, you’ll see a boost in organic traffic.

5. Have topical authority

How much have you written about a specific topic? How does it compare to how much your competitor has written about the same subject matter? The more you generate content regarding a particular topic, the more topically relevant you’ll be and rank higher in SERPs. 

For example, healthline.com has written 1,200 posts relating to pregnancy. As a result, the website receives over 4 million monthly organic users just in the United States for its pages relating to pregnancy topics.

Obtain the SEO results you want with Optimizely

Whether it’s marketing, content creation, or search engine optimization, Optimizely helps your business stay ahead of trends without the guesswork. Our solutions and team of experts can assist you in ranking higher in search engines and gaining new customers.

Contact Optimizely today to learn more!