No matter your industry or target audience, it’s an undebatable fact you’ve got to perfect your SEO strategy if you hope to get your material in front of your target customer. While companies like Mimvi can help you perfect your SEO prowess, there are a few tips you can put to good use on your own to become an authority in your industry while boosting your search engine ranking.
Pick a Niche
Your industry is likely to have several areas in which you can focus your company, time, energy and products/services. Rather than scatter yourself across as many areas as possible in your industry, pick one or two areas to focus on that truly interest you and represent your company. Not only does deciding on a niche help your optimization strategy, doing so can also become a major selling point for your brand.
Provide Precise Answers to Questions Common in Your Industry
Another way to present yourself as an authority and boost your SEO rankings is to answer common questions customers might ask that will bring up a page on your site whenever they type that question into a search engine. Specifically, you’ll want to pepper your site with questions as well as answers to anything related to inquiries dealing with “who, what, where, why, when and how,” like a reporter. Know that you don’t have to list the typed question exactly on your page for it to be picked up by search engine crawlers, but you should have the answer as close to the question as possible and include a few words from the question in that answer for the best results.
Focus on Building Trust
While deciding which keywords and phrases to include throughout your business website, don’t neglect to focus on building trust with your audience. After all, you’re unlikely to be seen as an authority if visitors and customers have a hard time relying on the information you share with them. Building trust with your audience is especially vital if you’re selling a service or product you expect people to buy. You can build trust by being as transparent as possible in your business operations and only sharing honest and up-to-date information on your page.
Inform Site Visitors
As a business owner, of course you’re focused on boosting your profits, but that shouldn’t be your sole focus while crafting your site. Be sure to become a source of valuable and useful information in your quest to become an industry authority. Do a little searching of your own to learn the latest news and developments in your industry your visitors and customers will be interested in. No matter what you decide to share, make sure it’s exciting, relevant, inspiring or memorable. In regards to your SEO strategy, these informative pieces can contain a few popular keyphrases and words.
Know Your Identity and State It
As you were putting together a plan when you first started assembling your company, you likely had a vision as well as a reason for starting your business. Share that vision and reason on your site to set yourself apart from your competitors and others in your business. Make it easy to see what your company culture is so people know what to say when talking about your company. What needs do your company seek to meet? What’s your ultimate goal? What keeps you going when you want to call it quits? When you think about industry authorities, all of them have a unique perspective and take on their business sector.
Don’t Disappoint
Whenever you share something on your site, you’re essentially making a promise. To become an authority, you want to make sure you don’t break that promise or disappoint your readers and visitors when they reach the end of an article, subscription, download or another type of content. Essentially, the promise is in your title and first paragraph, and the rest of the content needs to follow through with that promise and bring things full circle while you work on boosting your SEO ranking. By breaking promises or ending things with a whimper rather than a rousing BANG, you risk scaring visitors away and losing their trust. You’ve only got one chance to change someone into a loyal customer and brand advocate, so make sure you don’t blow it.
SEO and becoming an industry authority easily go hand-in-hand when you have the right insight. Now you realize even more how optimizing your site the right way can pay off much more than you may realize.
