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How SEO savvy are you? To be successful in the digital world, SEO is a must-have for every successful marketing campaign, and a make-it-or-break-it skill set for every marketer to be successful in today’s marketing landscape.

While there isn’t a magic list of things you can do to guarantee your website lands on the first page of Google search results, there are certainly best practices that apply to every site.

With the assistance of Anne Ryan, director of brand strategy at Philadelphia-based advertising agency Brownstein Group, we pinpointed four best practices, with tools to match to boost your content’s reach:

Best practice: Use keywords to get your site to appear in search results
Tool: Ubersuggest
Effective SEO requires proper keyword usage. In order to be successful in SEO, brands need to identify keywords that customers use to search for their product or service, and incorporate them into the content they create.

“Knowing your keywords is really important because Google has an algorithm that ranks search results based on 200 factors, the most important being keyword search,” says Ryan.

To understand how customers are searching for your brand, you can use keyword tools like Ubersuggest.

Best practice: Creating timely content
Tool: Googletrends.com
Great SEO performance relies on a common journalistic principle: write content that is timely. When creating content, it is imperative that brands create content that’s relevant at a certain time. That’s why reporters are not covering education stories in the middle of summer, or talking about Black Friday trends in March.

To maximize SEO, use Googletrends.com to see what consumers are searching for and when. Use the information to create content based on those trends.

“It’s important to create a strategy with your editorial team to write copy that matches when people are searching for specific things,” Ryan says.

Using the tool, you can even plan ahead.

“Googletrends.com shows what times of the year certain search terms are trending and popular as well as trends over time,” she explains.

Use it to book your editorial calendar with relevant content ideas.

Best practice: Create a variety of content types
Tool: Canva
SEO isn’t just about creating a blog post; it’s about creating sharable content. In some cases, content is best portrayed through video or visuals like infographics. Content diversity should be a key ingredient in your SEO recipe, Ryan says.

“It’s more beneficial to create content that can be shared and discussed than 200 pieces that are just okay,” says Ryan. “Focus on creating content that you know people are looking for and that no one has done a great job producing yet.”

Once you have a must-read idea, ask yourself, “What’s the best way to present this?” To keep your content diverse, try using Canva, a user-friendly tool that helps marketers create slick, professional infographics.

Best practice: Understanding how SEO-friendly your site is
Tool: WooRank
How well are you doing with SEO? Put your brand’s website to the test with WooRank. This tool shows the SEO strengths and weaknesses of your site and gives you suggestions to improve it. It looks at things like mobile optimization, backlinks, content frequency and website usability.

What SEO tools do you use? How has it helped you improve SEO for your brand? Tell us in the comment section below.