In this blog, Huble will share eight SEO best practices to help you optimise your website and generate more leads:
Given the amount of competition online, organic search is one of the most important sources of website traffic for B2B companies.
Statistics show that most of us use Google at least once a day to search for information online – so you can be sure that your customers are doing the same when they are researching solutions to problems your business can solve.
But even so, generating quality organic traffic continues to be a major challenge for B2B companies, and whilst there are articles on search engine optimisation (SEO) out there – combing through them can be daunting if you don’t know where to start.
Fortunately, there are some simple things you can do today to boost your website’s organic traffic. Just by optimising your website for search engines, you can improve its visibility online, make it more user friendly and significantly increase your chances of generating new leads.
1. Start with keyword research
Before creating your content strategy, do some keyword research. Look at your company’s value proposition and your buyer persona’s core pain points and think about:
- What describes your offering best?
- What are the key terms you want to be found for?
- What are the terms your buyer personas are looking for when they are researching a problem?
You can use these questions to understand what terms you should be targeting.
Then you can use tools like Moz, Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, and Answer the Public – to aid your keyword research. Using the right keywords will enable you to generate high-quality, targeted traffic and convert more website visitors into leads!
2. Create content clusters
In the past, optimising content was all about optimising it for one specific keyword. You would use fragmented keyword terms in copy to increase its chances of being found online and that would be that.
Fortunately, search engines have evolved… and users don’t use fragmented keyword terms to find things online.
Currently, search engines look beyond just keywords to deliver accurate search results and are increasingly concerned with context and intent. Google, for example, now favours topic-based content (and has done so since the Hummingbird update).
But what does this mean for you?
It means to stay ahead of the competition, you need to create high-quality content around your topics of expertise. Before creating content, always consider a searcher’s intent and the context of their search query – in other words, what do they want to know?
For mapping out your content strategy, consider using topic clusters. They are far more organised and have a number of SEO benefits. Learn more about topic clusters by reading this blog.
3. Page optimisation
To build up the SEO value of your website and ensure your pages can be found, it’s essential that all your pages are optimised for different keywords. You can do this by following these simple steps:
- H1 – should include your main keyword
- URL – should include your main keyword
- Meta title – should include your main keyword
- Meta description – should include your main keyword or a variation of it
- Body copy – should include your keyword (or natural variations of it) at least three to four times throughout the copy, depending on the length of the page (a good keyword density is 3-5%)
4. Link building
Another SEO best practice tip is to think about how new content links to existing content on your website. For instance:
- Where can you include useful hyperlinks to other resources?
- Do your blogs link to your pillar pages?
- Are there external sources you need to link to?
- Do you have links from external websites pointing toward yours?
NB – On a landing page, we’d advise not to include any hyperlinks, as they just distract the reader from the main goal: submitting the form.
5. Mobile optimisation
Did you know that 58% of all Google searches are done on mobile devices? This isn’t a new trend and mobile usage continues to grow, so ensuring your website is mobile-optimised is key.
You will probably know from experience that there is nothing more irritating than trying to read a tiny version of a desktop web page on your phone!
However, you can resolve this by using a responsive web design. This ensures your web pages are optimised for mobile devices, making it easy for users (and Google) to read and navigate them.
6. Optimise rich content (videos and images)
Video is the most talked-about marketing tactic in 2019, but how can you use it as part of your SEO and lead gen strategy?
First, make sure they are embedded on your web page and supported by some copy to help search engines understand what the video is about.
Also, when using images, make sure to compress and resize them accordingly to optimise load speed and reduce bounce rates. In general, images shouldn’t exceed 150KB and also have alt tags to help search engines understand what they are.
Rule of thumb: treat your images the same as your written content – make them as relevant as possible so they provide added value to the reader.
7. Repurpose and update old content
If you already have loads of content, instead of neglecting it and just creating brand-new content, we would recommend you update and refresh existing content where possible.
Start by reviewing your old content to see what can be updated and/or expanded with new information, facts or statistics. Once you know, unpublish the content, add the new bits of information and republish it.
Search engines, particularly Google, love fresh content. Just take a look at our case study to see how updating old content can benefit your website.
8. Optimise content for featured snippets
Featured Snippets are another great way to make your content appear organically on Google. They are, as the name suggests, short snippets at the top of search engine results from pages that show the answer(s) to the query in question.
To increase the chances of your content being featured as a snippet, there are a few things you need to do:
- Use questions as headers and answer those questions right away
- Consider using bullet points or numbers for section headers and ensure keywords are included in them
- Keep copy as short and concise as possible
- Approach content as if you were creating a guide
Just check out one of our blog posts being featured at the top of a Google search engine results page as a featured snippet:
You can also use structured data to help search engines understand what your content is about. Essentially, you mark up your web pages using one of these data formats so Google and others understand the data more clearly.
These are my eight SEO best practices for lead generation in 2019. Clearly, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to optimising your website – but with a bit of strategic planning, it can be done.
SEO success won’t happen overnight but if you follow the best practices outlined in this blog, you’ll be in a great position to attract website visitors and convert them into leads.
