SEO You Need to Know Before Building Your Next Website

You’ve started your business and are ready to offer customers a wonderful product that will enrich their lives. Now you just need to get that product into the customer’s hands, and much of that effort starts with a great website that we call a sales funnel.

But as you build your funnel, you’ve probably given thought to how well it will rank on Google. A high Google ranking can mean all the difference between a page that brings in thousands of visitors every month and one that barely gets any notice. A high ranking means more people entering your funnel. The question then becomes, how do you get your page to rank high enough to get traffic?

Chances are you’ve heard of the concept of SEO but didn’t really know what it was or how it affects you. If you’re looking for help in understanding this idea, you’ve come to the right place. Knowing SEO can be especially helpful when building your sales funnel. Let’s start with some of the SEO basics.

The Basics of SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This practice focuses on getting the most organic traffic thanks to favorable search engine results. But we’re already getting into terminology that might read like a foreign language, so let’s break it down a bit more.

When we’re talking about traffic, we really mean visitors to your sales funnel. Traffic based on search engine results can get to your page in different ways. There’s paid traffic, where people visit the landing page for your sales funnel due to ads you pay for that show up on Google’s results. Then there’s organic traffic which comes from Google’s organic rankings. These are rankings you don’t pay for but rather show up organically based on Google’s algorithm which ranks web pages based off of a number of factors.

The higher the ranking, the more organic traffic you’re going to get. That’s what we’re going to focus on.

So what determines a web page’s Google ranking? Google’s goal is to present results to users that will match their intent. So if someone is searching for a course on building self-esteem (like a course you have to offer), Google will want to show them results that will satisfy their search the best. To do that, Google has created an algorithm that takes into account hundreds of ranking factors. That may seem overwhelming, but when it comes to SEO marketing, you can narrow your focus down significantly to only a few.

Now that you know what some of the most important factors are for ranking better on Google, let’s go over what you can do and why you should do it.

Use Keywords, Gain Relevance

When it comes to SEO for small businesses or large businesses, relevance remains a key factor. Google wants to direct visitors to web pages that are relevant to whatever their search is.

If you run a business that specializes in a nutritional supplement, for example, people that search Google for that type of business will likely want to check out your store. But how does Google know that your sales funnel relates closely to supplements? That all depends on you and what you put on your landing page.

This is where keywords and keyphrases can play a big role. Keywords and phrases are what people type into the Google search bar, and Google wants to direct them to pages that best match what they’re typing in. If someone types in “nutritional supplement” and you have a sales funnel devoted to that very topic with the phrase “nutritional supplement” mentioned several times, Google will determine that the page is relevant to the search. In other words, relevance is the term that best describes content on your sales funnel that affects rankings.

What You Can Do
Including important keywords is a big component of search engine optimization. But certain keywords can be extremely competitive to rank. The keyword “supplements,” for example, will have a high search volume and thus be more difficult to rank for since pages that likely have more authority than you will be at the top of the list.

For a more effective approach, try to rank for longer keyphrases. “Nutritional supplements” will have less search volume but still apply to your page and feature less competition. “Nutritional supplements for mental clarity” is even more of a niche keyphrase, but since it’s not as competitive, you may be able to rank highly for it.

Find out what keywords you should rank for and be sure to include them on your page.

Get Those Links

Authority is the term for one of the biggest factors that determines Google rankings. You see, Google wants to direct users to web pages that have a high authority. But authority isn’t necessarily based off of what is on your funnel. It has more to do with what other pages think of it.

If someone on another site likes the landing page for your funnel and thinks it’s something other people should visit, they’ll place a link to that page on their own site. The more outside links point to your funnel, the higher authority it will have and the better it will do in Google’s rankings.

What You Can Do
You may feel a bit helpless when it comes to this since it depends on other sites linking to you, but there are still things you can do to help get things going. One way is to build your funnel in such a way that it can become an authoritative voice on whatever you’re selling.

Be the expert. Know what you’re talking about.

If you do this, other sites will have no second thoughts about linking to your page. If your sales funnel on nutritional supplements is recognized as being great, other places like health and wellness websites will gladly link to your material.

You can also facilitate building links by offering content of your own. In this example, you can reach out to health sites and offer to do a guest blog post about the importance of supplements. The post would then contain a link back to your sales funnel.

These marketing SEO strategies take work, but the payoff is well worth it once you start seeing more and more links directing back to your funnel.

Create Great Content, Please Your Audience

Google also measures how people react to your sales funnel as a factor for determining rankings. If a person likes what they see on your page after searching on Google, it will get a higher ranking in the future.

Telling if a person likes what they see on your page can be pretty subjective, but Google has a way of boiling it down into something more quantifiable. This is called bounce rate, and here’s how it works.

Bounce rate measures how long someone stays on your web page before leaving it. If someone searches a term, goes on a page listed on the rankings, and clicks the back button after just a few seconds, chances are they didn’t find it relevant or interesting enough.

Conversely, if someone stays on a page for at least several minutes, they’ve likely found something they consider to be relevant to their search. People like to stay on pages that offer interesting content that’s related to what they’re looking for.

What You Can Do
The content you put on your funnel is what will contribute to not only people linking to your page but visitors staying on that page. As you can see, this directly affects bounce rate. If a visitor clicks on your page after searching in Google and likes what they see, they’re going to stick around for at least a few minutes. This is a great thing in the eyes of Google.

So what makes good content? Something that engages the visitor and is relevant to what they’re looking for. This can be an interesting article, an entertaining blog post, or even a video. It’s really up to you.

Create content that draws people’s attention and holds that attention for longer than just a glance.

Avoid Dubious Tactics

There are lots of different strategies in SEO. Small businesses and large companies have a lot to gain, but it’s important you avoid engaging in SEO practices that are considered unethical. These are sometimes referred to as “Black Hat SEO.”

One example of this is keyword stuffing. That’s where a keyword or phrase is placed all over a web page, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. If a black hat technique is discovered by Google, you could be penalized or blacklisted altogether. Focus on safe and reliable practices and you won’t have to worry about running afoul of Google.

SEO is Just the Start

When building your sales funnel, keeping SEO in mind is of course very important, but it’s only a start. The goal is to get visitors started into your funnel, which will eventually lead to sales and higher revenue.

The better your SEO, the higher the number of visitors coming to your web page. And the more people come to your web page, the more people will enter your sales funnel and continue on their journey as a customer.

SEO is just like any other tool. Use it well and you’ll see some impressive results.

Continued Reading

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