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5 Tips to Boost Your Brand SEO

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The rules of SEO are always changing. What worked a couple years ago may not work today. To take your brand SEO to the next level, follow these tips.

Design for Mobile

In most industries, most searches are now done on mobile devices. Responding to this, Google switched to mobile-first indexing in 2020. Now the mobile version of your website, not the desktop version, is indexed and used to determine search rank.

To optimize for mobile indexing, evaluate your mobile site for things like loading times and navigation. Also make sure the structural elements of your mobile site are identical to those of your desktop site.

Use Keywords Wisely

Just using a keyword isn’t always helpful. Repeating keywords too often will cause Google’s algorithm to penalize you for “keyword stuffing,” so you want to use keywords carefully.

Use keywords where they fit naturally. Content should flow for the reader and not appear stilted to use the right keywords.

Where you put keywords matters, too. Keywords in meta titles, descriptions and image tags as well as page titles, and subheadings carry more weight than keywords in the body text.

Think Q&A

More searches are questions. So, Google now offers Q&A type search results. When you type a question into a Google search, you sometimes see a box with a snippet of text answering the question. This is the answer box, and it’s becoming increasingly important.

Google’s algorithm populates answer boxes with text that directly answers a specific question. Write out the question you want to target in your content, and then provide an answer in a way that’s concise and accurate.

Keep Brand Content Fresh

Search engines still like “new” content. So, focus on making your old content new again.

Look for relevant content published in the last few years. Add new links, remove old ones, update any outdated information, and publish. This gets valuable content in front of new readers and gives it an SEO boost.

Provide Content for People

Search engines are machines, but they try to be like people. The goal is to rank highly those websites that serve user needs and interests. Google’s algorithm is designed to prioritize pages with the best user experience. If you can focus on this first, many aspects of SEO for your brand will fall into place as a result.

Tips for Your Daily SEO Routine

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long term effort. To achieve good SEO and to maintain your rank requires regular attention. Here are the things you need to attend to in your daily SEO routine.

Keep a Steady Stream of Fresh Content

Content is important to rank. Regularly add new content and keep existing content up to date. You don’t have to publish a new post every day. Set a schedule that works for you and stick to it.

If you don’t have time to write a new article, it’s useful to have a list of content that was published in the past that can be refreshed and republished.

New content can also take the form of comments and responses. Be sure to engage with everyone who comments on your content online.

Add Links

Look for places to interconnect content within your website, and from your website to other sites. Both internal and external links support SEO goals. As your site grows, look for ways to interconnect related content with links.

Maintain Your Site

Don’t let your site get out of date. Make sure you comply with the latest dos and don’ts for SEO. It is easier to stay on top of the latest than catch up after falling behind. Worse, lagging on these items can take your website completely offline!

  • Keep software updated
  • Unpublish outdated content
  • Keep your secure certificate active
  • Update keywords and schema

Watch Your Data

Monitor your Google analytics regularly. Google Analytics has a ton of interesting data you can use to optimize your website. Pay attention to where your web traffic is coming from and what information people are accessing most. This can give you insight into content that isn’t of interest any more, as well as topics you should add more about.

Keep Other Online Efforts in Sync with Your Website

If you are active on one or more social media platforms, regularly posting updates for your followers is a good way of showing that your account is alive and kicking. You can not only share your blog posts, but also pictures you take, events from your daily life, other articles you find interesting, and so on. You know your audience best, you know what they’ll like. And, while you’re at it, also try to regularly interact with people leaving comments on your social media pages to keep them engaged.

How to Optimize Video for SEO

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Videos and video content pages can be optimized for search engine visibility so they appear in the search results for target keywords. Don’t assume that posting videos on YouTube will mean they will rank better because Google owns YouTube. Video SEO comes from taking the right steps to be indexed around the right keywords.

Video SEO Best Practices

If you want traffic to your videos from search results pages, follow these best practices.

  • Pick the right platform for your videos. While all video platforms support SEO, some are better for particular goals. If you care about traffic acquisition and leads, a specialized video host like Wistia can be a good choice. If you care more about building a social following, YouTube, which has it’s own powerful search, is likely the best option.
  • Know your keywords. Find out what people are talking about or asking. Answer questions with your content and make sure your videos fully satisfy those questions. When writing content for your video pages include the terminology viewers use.
  • Add captions and transcript for your video. A full transcript of the content on the page you want to rank instantly makes everything available to search engines. It also makes your content available for people who’d rather read what you have to say than watch a video.
  • Write great titles and descriptions. Make your titles and descriptions unique, keeping within the standard meta-title length of about 70 characters.

Make Sure Your Videos Are Crawlable

The pages that have video content must be reachable by search engines. The same goes for the videos themselves. If you host them on your site, don’t forget to make them available to the outside world. Be sure nothing prevents resources crawling in the robots.txt file.