Mainstreet HQ, Downers Grove - The Mainstreet Organization of REALTORS® marketing team has professional promotion tips and tricks to share with our members, aimed at doing two things: making you money and saving you money. As an on-going blog series, the content is consumer-focused; centered around improving your marketing processes with high-quality brand advancement advice.
The digital marketer in 2024 wears many hats. If you use marketing tools to promote your business, you should be aware of the phrase, “search engine optimization.” SEO for short; add that acronym to the toolbox.
Three germane questions to ask: (a) what is SEO, (b) why is it important for marketing your brand and (c) how do you improve it?
1. What is SEO?
According to Mailchimp, SEO is “the process of optimizing a website’s technical configuration, content relevance and link popularity to become easily findable, more relevant and popular in user search query results and consequentially rank higher on search result pages.”
Now what does THAT mean? Simply put, the stronger your SEO strategy the higher you “rank” on Google result pages based on keyword searches. First glance examples of a strong SEO strategy start at the top of a webpage. Include specific titles and subtitles for all page content; this captures the eyes of a reader and previews the content below that follows.
Once the titles and subtitles are written out, be sure to stay on topic. The more specific on-page content is to the title and subtitle, the more authority the page has for keyword recognition.
2. Why is SEO important for marketing your brand?
“Ranking” higher on a Google keyword search results page means you have ‘authority’ related to a keyword search. With higher authority comes:
- Increased webpage traffic
- Increases visibility to buyers and sellers
- Higher volume of lead generation
How many times do you use page two of a Google search? It is more likely a consumer will retool their search to see more relevant, immediate results rather than scroll more search pages.
3. How do you improve your SEO strategy?
Without further ado, here are three suggested guidelines to improve your SEO successes:
- Authenticity Matters – Readers want to feel like you are talking to them. Authoring engaging content on your pages will retain reader attention and allow them to see the most important messages. Consumers need to get to know you as a writer to become followers. You are the subject matter expert for your business; show them your expertise and why it is unique to your brand.
- End-User Mindset – Consider your favorite websites. What makes them so easy to use? Why do you use them so often? They are built to make YOUR navigation of them a breeze. Drop down menus, internal links to other pages on the site and call-to-action (CTA) buttons are always readily available with your brand in view. Does your webpage have these features?
- Mobile-friendly Accessibility – What do you use more daily, your laptop or your phone? The answer is probably close to the same amount by now. Add in tablets for good measure and you come to the same conclusion. Websites MUST be optimized for mobile users because rapid access to information happens all day long, not just at a desktop. Working with a website developer to check your page for mobile friendliness is vital to ranking higher on Google keyword search result pages.
The Mainstreet Marketing blog series will continue, featuring advice about graphic design, video production, social media, email marketing and brand promise promotion. Stay tuned for the next installment!
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