10 Simple Steps to Boost Your SEO in 2021

Content marketing and search engine optimisation needn’t be a minefield. Here are 10 simple steps to boost your SEO and get your brand out there in 2021.

#1. Pick the right keywords but don't keyword-stuff-your-content

Content, being read and consumed by your target audience online, depends on the right keywords being chosen. The foundations of any successful content marketing campaign start with effective keyword research to determine your SEO strategy. This is where you'll want to figure out your primary, secondary and long-tail keywords.

With proper research and strategy, you'll be able to focus on creating content that will help your customers whilst effectively optimising your content, giving your pages what they need to rank above your competitors. Remember to write for humans and not search engines. You want to create content that'll inform, educate and engage.

To avoid keyword stuffing, use the below tried and tested method to determine keyword density and assess your keyword usage.

Keyword Density = (Number of words in copy) / (Number of times keyword appears in copy)

While there is no exact number to abide by, best practice advises no more than a 2% keyword density to ensure you aren't over saturating your content.

#2. Write relevant and unique page titles and meta descriptions for every page

One of the most vital SEO tips that most writers neglect is a well-crafted meta description and title tag. With meta descriptions and title tags you want to make sure they’re the right length (neither too long, nor too short, Moz recommends 60 characters in length for title tags and between 50–160 characters for meta descriptions), use accurate keywords and phrases for each page, abide by point #1, and write for your customers, not Google.

Meta title tags and descriptions help search engines understand what your page is about, and they are the first impression many people have of your page and key to providing value and driving page clicks.

#3. Make video content

For us writers, it can be a bit painful to admit, but people LOVE video. Having an engaging video on your website, explaining what you do and how your service or product will help your prospects and when done right can lead to increased conversions - make video content part of your content marketing strategy to keep visitors engaged and, convince them to make a purchase or get in touch.

What's more, engagement-worthy video content can drive a substantial number of inbound links and social shares for the website in question and we all know that more traffic = more doors opened to potential customers.

#3. Create engaging content

When creating content you want to make sure you get your readers hooked and ensure they read through the whole article, you don't want to send your prospective customers to sleep. And like everything, the hardest bit is getting started.

If you’re reading this, you probably own your own business or work in marketing. This makes you either an expert in your business’ product or service, an expert in marketing a product or service, somebody with access to experts – or all of the above.

Focus on turning this knowledge into enlightening content that will help your prospects and make them want to read on, then use the below techniques to get them to stick around (and get in touch):

1. Use visuals
2. Think about your layout; sub headers and bullet points
3. Break long chunks of text down into short parts
4. Speak in your brand voice and make sure the tone is relatable
5. Include a call to action
6. Add an engaging form-fill
7. Switch up your content

#4. Be visual with your content marketing

As we mentioned above, the trick to creating engaging content (especially within a long-form article) often requires the inclusion of something visual.

Creating visual content; infographics, GIFs, screenshots, charts and graphs, infographics, videos, inserted quotes, emojis, etc, all perform well and are often more likely to entice the reader to read on and generate post-click engagement.

#5. Set up a Google My Business profile to boost your content and SEO

It feels like a faff, we know, but setting up a Google My Business profile will significantly boost your content and SEO. More importantly, you want to make sure you are taking advantage of all of GMB's impressive features.

Google’s algorithm for ranking Google My Business profiles does not just rely on proximity and relevance but activity and quality of information. Including reviews, FAQs and photos in your profile will signal to Google that you take your business profile seriously and will rank you higher in local results as a result.

And higher rank, as with anything SEO related, means increased visibility and engagement with your business online.

#6. Use social media to amplify your content

While social media does not directly contribute to SEO rankings, the links you share across social platforms increase brand exposure, visibility, traffic, and generate backlinks. Also key to watch out for are brand mentions. If you get your product or service out there on social media, and people take note, they will talk about it. This, in turn, can help to drive shares, sales and get more people engaging with your brand.

Think about which social media site best lends itself to what you have to say, too. For example, if you manufacture office lighting, post aesthetic pictures of your products on Instagram. If you’re an accountancy or consultancy firm, leave comments on LinkedIn posts. And once you’ve become more comfortable using social media to amplify your content, keep an eye on the latest social media trends. Instagram stories for example have a 'private friends' list that you can add your most engaged followers to, serve them exclusive content and ultimately drive brand engagement and boost sales.

#7. Make sure you have a compelling CTA

A prospect has arrived at your site – possibly thanks to that informative, well-optimised blog post you shared earlier in the day – now get them to engage with a compelling call to action, as what good is a piece of engaging content if it ends up being a road that leads to nowhere?

Whether your CTA lies within a persistent header or a typical end-of-post, static form-fill, don't forget it.

#8. Include digital PR in your SEO strategy

Digital PR is all about using tried and tested PR tactics to earn backlinks that will impact your website's organic visibility and SEO efforts.

When you create engaging content, whether that's a great story, a data-driven study presented as an infographic and/or a research piece, if it's high-quality - journalists will want to cover it, and in doing so, you'll boost your organic search rankings.

#8. Use analytics to measure the success of your SEO strategy

Measure, measure, measure everything you do online. There are countless tools that will help you measure the impact of your content marketing and SEO campaigns and provide insight on how your content is performing - ie. how much it's being read and how long for.

Google Analytics is of course the primary tool for measuring your business website’s performance, but marketing automation tools like HubSpot will help you track how you perform, help you convert and generate leads across multiple platforms.

#10. Refresh old content to win back traffic

Believe it or not, that's just what we did with this blog. If certain pages have been declining in SEO traffic over time then it's time to refresh your content, whether you expand on the blog, re-optimise, update it in line with current stats, re-promote or re-target it, all of this will help you to win back old traffic.

Even more importantly, Google prefers that individual pages be updated regularly, so it really is a no-brainer.

If you want to find out more about how to boost your SEO and get your brand out there, Nutcracker are here to help. Call us on 020 3941 0305 or get in touch today at hello@nutcrackeragency.com.