If you’re starting a new business venture, there can be a lot that has to get done. From delegating responsibilities and commitments to coming up with a viable financial plan, your digital marketing strategy may not be at the forefront of your mind. However, in this day and age, finding a strategy for your digital presence is one of the most important things you can do to help you expand your business and grow your company. Luckily, there are a lot of tips and tools that you can use to create an effective digital marketing plan.

One of the most important things that you can do to increase your digital presence and gain a wider digital audience is utilize Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is a digital marketing strategy that helps you optimize your content to show up higher on search engine results pages, meaning that more people will be able to find your product or service and will be exposed to your websites and advertisements.

If you’re new to the digital marketing world or just need a refresher in SEO, there are a few essential SEO strategies you can use to ensure you’re reaching the widest audience and using SEO to its fullest capabilities.

Understand the Basics

SEO basics will be crucial to understanding how SEO can optimize your content. You can look for an SEO glossary to show you everything, but there are a few basic things you should know. For example, what is TLS, HTTPS and SSL?

Knowing how search engines rank websites and content is important, too. Take time to understand how your content gets analyzed by crawlers and what you can do to rank higher.

To understand SEO basics, it may also be helpful to look at websites like Moz or Yoast, two popular SEO websites, to understand how SEO ranking works.

It’s also of interest to understand organic versus paid traffic, engagement and indexing.

Find Your Niche

Finding your niche should be one of the first things you do when crafting your SEO plan. This is because finding your niche will help you come with all of the right keywords and phrases that your target audience is looking for. Finding your niche requires you to understand who your target audience is and what they need, as well as who your product or service caters to. A few questions you can ask yourself when trying to find your niche include: Who benefits from your product or service? What does your product or service hope to provide to the user? What is the location, age range or gender of the people who will benefit the most from your product or service?

Another way to find your niche is to find your closest competitors and see what their niche is. For example, if you provide a graphic design service, find another graphic design service and identify their niche to show you where you should be heading.

Find Key Performance Indicators 

Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are measurable and quantifiable goals that show your business’s performance. They should be easy to analyze and related to your business.

Choose KPIs that are directly related to the overall goals of your company and your business venture. For example, if you want to improve sales, you can quantify that into a KPI but making a goal to boost sales by 10% and increase conversion rates. Your KPIs should be detailed and quantifiable, meaning don’t just make it to “improve sales.” Instead, aim to increase sales by a certain amount.

You should also be sure to focus on a few essential KPIs and work hard to reach them, rather than come up with an overwhelming amount of goals that you can’t focus your energy on reaching.

Find The Right Keywords

The right keywords are one of the most important ways that you can create your SEO strategy. Keywords or key phrases are the basis of how your content will rank on search engines. For example, if you search for “marketing agency in Texas” search engines will show related content. If you use keywords or phrases that your target audience is using, it will help you show up more often and ultimately increase sales.

When finding the right keywords and phrases, make sure that they’re detailed enough to show up within your target audience’s search. Many people may be searching for a marketing agency, but by adding “in Texas” to your key phrase, it will help you define your niche and show up more often, as there are less companies using that specific key phrase. To find the right keyword, be sure it relates to your product or service. It may be helpful to get in the headspace of your potential customer or client. What are they searching for? What do they need?

You should also be aware of “keyword stuffing” or using the same keyword too close together, as this can actually hurt your search engine rankings.

Make Your Content SEO-Friendly

Even if you have old content, make sure it is all optimized for search engines, as this is the most essential way to create an SEO-friendly website.

Blog articles and landing pages should all have SEO-friendly content, but how do you make this content? For one, be sure that the length of your content is optimized for SEO. Either too little content or too much can hurt your SEO ratings. You should also put inbound and outbound links in your content. To do this, find relevant blogs from other sources or from your own website. However, be careful to not put too many links in. This can not only hurt your SEO ranking, but also turn off your audience, as it may seem too spam-like.

Creating the right SEO strategy can be hard work, but it can be beneficial to your business’s overall growth. A digital marketing presence is essential to your business and knowing SEO can be a big part of your digital strategy. Be sure to follow these tips to create the best SEO strategy possible.