Know What Your SEO is Missing – EDKENT® MEDIA

Brands stay alive online because of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Although marketing beginners or experienced professionals know SEO basics, they face significant challenges. The changing algorithms of search engines and the competitive online environment cause entrepreneurs to miss significant opportunities. 

Let’s look at the areas you might overlook in your SEO strategy.

1. Voice Search Optimization

People now use voice searches as an established, modern online search method. Smart speakers and voice assistants allow consumers to search hands-free and find accurate, instant answers to their queries.

Here’s how you can optimize for voice search:

• Use long-tail, conversational keywords.
• Optimize with question-based queries. For example, “Where’s the nearest cafe?”
• Increase site loading speed as voice search prefers fast results.
• Include an FAQ section that answers your customers’ common search queries.
  

2. Content for the Buyer’s Journey

Most SEO strategies aim only to drive conversions but often do not direct users through the buyer’s journey. Your content must act as a guide to your user at every step. Here’s how you can organize the content:

Include blog posts, infographics, and short videos introducing your brand, products/services and how it answers your consumers’ problems.

• Phase 2: Consideration stage

Create case studies, comparison guides, and detailed product information to educate your audience.

Guide your users while they decide to purchase by implementing testimonials, reviews and attractive call-to-actions (CTAs).

You will improve engagement and conversion rates by altering your content and aligning it with the buyer’s journey.

3. Structure Your Data

Structuring your data in an easy-to-understand format helps search engines learn better about your offering. It translates the data into rich snippets to attract audiences.

Check these tips to structure your data:

• Highlight product reviews, recipes, FAQs, and events with schema markup.
• Use Google tools like “Rich Results Test” to examine your structured data.
• Avoid penalties by ensuring all markups are compliant with Google’s guidelines.

Rich snippets make your listings visually attractive and informative, increasing your click-through rates (CTR).

4. Creating Mobile-Friendly Websites

With the majority of searches recorded on mobile devices, Google now ranks searches based on whether the website is mobile-friendly. Businesses that create versatile website designs can attract higher rankings and potential customers.

Check these tips to design a mobile-friendly website:

• Implement responsive design.
• Test your site’s mobile usability using Google’s testing tools.
• Ensure all content and functionality are accessible on mobile.
• Use Google PageSpeed Insights to improve page loading speed.

 

5. Work on Your E-A-T

No matter what field your business is in, your website must display your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. People will only invest in your solutions or products when your E-A-T strategy is in place, which helps you get higher rankings.

You can improve your E-A-T by:

• Publish content written by industry professionals.
• Getting backlinks from reliable websites.
• Putting up your credentials, your certifications, and testimonials.
• Have your “About Us” and “Contact” pages transparent and up-to-date.
  

6. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are the performance attributes of user experience. They measure loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Prioritizing these metrics is important for improving rankings.

Here are the three things to prioritize:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Optimize to load your main content faster.

Optimize to ensure user interactions are responded to immediately.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Prevent frequent layout shifts during page loading.

To monitor and improve your Core Web Vitals, use tools like Google Search Console and Lighthouse.

7. Local SEO for Niche Markets

Local SEO is extremely relevant if you target a certain geographic location or niche market. Many businesses fail to realize the potential of local optimization. But you can start reaping its benefits once you optimize for local SEO.

Here’s how to start:

• Filing and optimization of your Google Business Profile.
• Ensuring your satisfied customers leave a review.
• Use platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, or industry-specific directories to build local citations.
• Use localized content to optimize for “near me” searches.
  

8. Content Refreshing

Outdated content weighs down your overall site performance. Updating older content is one thing that many marketers tend to miss.

Here’s how you can refine older content:

• Keep links, statistics and references updated.
• Add new visuals, insights, and multimedia to the old content.
• Use new keywords and optimize for search intent changes.
• Republish your content to show a recent date, signalling search engines that your content is fresh.

By refreshing content, you improve rankings and extend the lifespan of your most successful posts.

9. Video SEO

Video content is a popular way to reach your target audience. However, most websites do not optimize it for search engines. Video SEO is a powerful tool, especially for popular search engines like YouTube.

Start optimizing video content for SEO by:

• Putting in descriptive titles, tags, and transcripts.
• Generating appealing thumbnails and CTA.
• Putting videos on platforms like YouTube and embedding them on your website.
• Using structured data to appear in video-rich snippets and optimizing video loading speed.

 

10. Competitor Analysis

Understanding your competitors’ actions can help you identify gaps in your SEO strategy. Businesses often fail to utilize or identify inconsistency in their approach to competitor analysis.

Check these tips for a successful competitor analysis:

• Find competitor keywords, backlinks and content strategies using tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz.
• Observe their site structure, UX and loading speed.
• Identify areas they are performing well and develop ways to outperform them.
  

11. User Intent Alignment

Most SEO strategies fail because they focus more on keywords and less on user intent. Identify what users are looking for. Are they seeking information, a product, or a comparison of your product or service? Misaligned content leads to high bounce rates and low conversions.

Here’s how you can align your content with user intent:

• Use target keywords to conduct a search intent analysis.
• Create content for informational, navigational, transactional or commercial intent. 
• Track user behaviour metrics to identify mismatched content.
  

12. Social Signals and SEO

Social media is not an SEO-specific ranking factor, but it is an effective way to drive traffic, gain brand awareness and get backlinks. 

Here’s how you can optimize your social media:

• Post your content consistently on social media platforms.
• Increase shares and comments by regularly engaging with your audience.
• Work together with influencers to reach mass audiences. 
• Analyze social media analytics to find gaps in your strategy and refine it as needed.
  

13. International SEO

International SEO is important if your audience consists of people from multiple countries or languages. Not addressing language and cultural differences on a global scale will limit your geographical opportunities.

Check these tips to optimize for international SEO:

• Use hreflang tags to relay the language and region targeting on the page.
• Beyond Google, optimize local search engines.
• Create content that is relatable to a diverse audience with translation and localization.
  

14. Analytics and Continuous Improvement

SEO strategies need to be regularly analyzed and updated so that your business can stay competitive.

Here are the primary factors to analyze:

• Observe key performance indicators (KPIs) like organic traffic, bounce and conversion rates.
• Run regular audits to discover technical problems or opportunities.
• Refine elements like headlines, CTAs, and landing pages using A/B testing.
• Stay updated on industry trends and changing algorithms.

SEO is a growing and complex subject. Even if you have a solid foundation, working on areas you have not been focusing on can help you outrank the competition and capture your audience’s attention.

The areas discussed in this blog are some of the most commonly overlooked potential of SEO strategies. Trials and errors are the only way businesses can identify what they are missing and refine their approach to improve performance. 

If you are a business owner struggling to determine what is missing from your SEO recipe, let our experts help you develop a strong and thriving SEO strategy. At Edkent Media, we excel at implementing proven strategies, helping businesses attract valued customers to their websites, and building a strong user base.