By CEO and Co-Founder of leading digital marketing agency Go Up, Edward Coram-James
It’s fair to say that the world has been a pretty tumultuous place recently. The pandemic and resulting recession, Brexit and the shockwaves caused by the Russia-Ukraine war are just some of the main events that have rocked us in the last few years. For businesses specifically, this turbulent environment has been hard to navigate, and it’s no surprise that the number going bust is rising.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. When there’s uncertainty there’s opportunity, and the planet’s population and businesses will always need entrepreneurial innovation in order to service their needs and desires. So how can businesses like yours ensure they can thrive regardless of what the world throws at them?
Well, in our opinion, the key to this is SEO (search engine optimisation). Increasing your website’s visibility on search engines is a vital way of securing more customers, improving your credibility and increasing brand awareness, among other benefits. As such, SEO can be a potent tool in helping your business thrive no matter what, but we’re pretty certain you knew that already.
In fact, almost every business is aware of universally-known SEO hacks like “create good content”, “optimise your site for keywords” and “get high quality backlinks”, so what are some of the more understated ways businesses like yours can bolster their SEO efforts?
1. Focus on cornerstone content
Content is certainly king, but perhaps the most crucial kind on a company’s website is cornerstone content. This refers to the set of articles containing the most important content and keywords relating to a business. These pieces need to be authoritative, well-researched and of sufficient length.
Good cornerstone content offers numerous benefits, including helping to improve your website’s hierarchy, increasing brand authority and helping target vital keywords. So, before you deal with the rest of your website’s content, be sure to get your cornerstone content right first.
From thinking more carefully about your targeted keywords to enhancing its readability, there are so many ways to optimise your cornerstone content.
2. Update old content
Speaking of great content, our next tip is to update old pieces you’ve written. Most businesses focus solely on creating new content, without thinking about how existing pieces can still help their SEO efforts despite being written years back.
By updating this content based on aspects like new developments in the relevant field, feedback and new technologies (for example, when featured snippets came into play), the page can actually enjoy a boost in visibility and traffic. What’s more, you prevent your website from being littered with outdated content providing little to no value to users.
Of course, if a piece truly isn’t relevant any more, then the best course of action may be to leave it alone or delete it altogether, depending on the context. All in all, updating old content is undoubtedly a valuable SEO strategy.
3. Perform keyword research on low authority sites
Think about it — the last time you searched for anything, it’s likely that a website like Wikipedia, BBC News or Yahoo ranked on page one. This is because these sites are authoritative sources with stringent content accuracy practices.
On the flip side to this though, some websites rank highly for certain queries despite having low authority, something that could represent a great opportunity for your own business.
By using an SEO tool to spy on your competitors, you can see what the lowest authority ones are ranking for and target these keywords yourself. Such terms are much less competitive than you may have thought, so targeting them can be an easy SEO win for your company.
4. Harness the power of PR
While PR is a powerful tool in its own right, many businesses don’t realise just how much it can complement and boost SEO. While no digital marketing strategy truly exists in a vacuum, by purposely combining your PR and SEO efforts together, you can push the latter to the next level.
For example, link-building content can be distributed to multiple channels by your PR team, while you can use keywords you want to target in your PR materials (like pitches, press releases and digital campaign materials).
