Search engine optimisation has become the name of the game if you want your website – and your brand – to be visible to the throngs of online customers waiting to discover you. Without Google SEO, your business isn’t even on the map. A top Search Engine Results Page (SERP) position ensures that you will receive attention, clicks, and new leads for relevant subjects and services. But only so many brands can hold the top spots for any subject or niche.

It’s no surprise that the competition is intense. Therefore, your SEO strategy, the tactics which ensure your content appears for user searches – must be superb. Two of the most important elements of SEO with Google are keywords and backlinks.

Keywords help you target your audience based on interest and intent. Backlinks signal that other websites find your content valuable. Together, this powerful duo can guide SEO strategies that boost any brand’s visibility, reach, and impact.

Keywords

Keywords in SEO are what tie your content to user search results. Users search for specific words, phrases, and questions. Content that matches those queries is provided as a search engine result. The “best match” appears at the top. Keywords are the first and primary way that relevance is determined. By researching keywords and organically integrating the right keywords into your content, you boost visibility for your specific target audience and become that “just in time” content that search engine users are looking for to make conversions.

Types of Keywords

• Short-Tail vs Long-Tail
  • Short-tail keywords are one or two words like “sneakers” and “tennis shoes”
  • Long-tail keywords are entire phrases and questions like “best sneakers for running” or “how do you prepare for a marathon”
• Primary vs Secondary
  • Primary keywords strongly tie the user’s search intent to your content.  “Broken sink” might be a primary keyword.
  • Secondary keywords or semantic keywords strengthen relevance by indicating what your content is really about. “sink drip” “plumbing tips” and “dripping faucet” might all be secondary keywords for the same search.

Keyword Research Tips

There are two ways to research keywords. The first is to use a set of tools that associates target keywords with your subject, products, and target audience. These tools include:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush

The second method is to use your own intuition regarding your subject and audience. As the expert, you know what matters. Combining these methods provides the best results, using both automated research tools and your insights into what your audience needs to know. This will help you find the most high-value keywords for organic SEO strategy.

Implementing Keywords

Implementing keywords for Google SEO must be done organically. Don’t let content-checker apps fool you – stuffing keywords has limited benefits. The best results come from naturally writing about the subjects covered by your keywords and finding organic ways to include your keywords (and their semantic equivalents) in a variety of sentences throughout each piece.

You can optimise your results by ensuring that keywords are used organically in titles, headers, and throughout your content. Be sure to target specific keyword clusters based on fulfilling search intent (answering questions and solving problems) and not the same keyword group for every piece of content.

Backlinks

A backlink are links that lead to your website content from other sites. They signal that other brands and organisations find your content valuable and relevant to their own subjects and audience. This is a signal that your content is likely professional, interesting, and useful. Backlinks provide an important signal for search engines and therefore are a powerful element of your brand’s SEO despite the links themselves often being outside your control.

As you might guess, accumulating backlinks can be challenging, but there are many strategies that can generate legitimate and valuable backlinks.

Types of Backlinks

• Natural backlinks are received organically. Other sites independently choose to link to your content because it is interesting and valuable as part of their own content.
• Manual backlinks lead back to your website when you share content on outside websites. Guest blogs, interviews, and published news articles are all examples of manual backlinks.
• Self-created backlinks are backlinks are generated by activity, but not necessarily through content. Your company’s presence on a professional directory, in a guest book, or in forum post signatures are examples of self-created backlinks.

Backlink Quality

Not all backlinks have the same value. High-quality backlinks are far more effective, while low-quality backlink strategies might even lead to penalties. The best backlinks are natural backlinks, but high-quality manual backlinks can also be valuable. A guest post that usefully informs the borrowed audience or a highly viewed interview position with links back to your website are examples of high-quality manual backlinks.

Directory listings are lower quality, but still useful to the reader. Backlinks that do not provide a relevant purpose or authority, however, will not help your SEO. Links back to your website must carry their own relevance and authority. They should help internet users see you as an expert and appreciate your content as relevant to their interests – which means relevant to the page and context that links back.

Master your brand’s Google SEO strategy with the help of Oracle Tree. Contact us today to learn more.

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