Whether you’re trying to improve your online discoverability through search engines or you want to improve your organic social campaign reach, there are a number of SEO tips you can use to improve your campaigns. 

Need your latest crime thriller to rank top for crime books in Google’s search results? 

Want to understand why your competitors are ranked more highly than you on search engines and how you can change this? 

Launching a new online education course and need to ensure you’re reaching both teachers and students?

Read on to discover our five SEO top tips that will help you to be found more easily on search engines by your target audiences, increase your website traffic, rank higher than your competitors for relevant keywords and improve your online presence. 

1. Research keywords 

Use keyword research tools to identify your top keywords and start using them on your website, in your social campaigns and in your online PR. There are a number of free and paid tools out there to choose from including the free Google Keyword Planner if you already have a Google Ads account. Google Keyword Planner will provide keyword suggestions based on your existing keywords or ideas that can be used organically in your online marketing.

2. Scope out the competition

Once you’ve identified your own keywords for your audiences, you need to find out what your competitors are doing using a paid SEO tool or an expert to help you. You’ll be able to learn what keywords your competitors are using, where their rankings are improving or lessening and what PPC ads they are using. This will help you to identify new keywords that may not have arisen in your Google Keyword Planner that your audiences are using to search for your products. 

3. Don’t forget your metadata!

Once you have a combined list of keywords that you can start using in your content marketing campaigns and on your website, make sure you update your meta descriptions. This is incredibly important in organic SEO as it has the power to increase the click-through rate of your organic search results. This means more traffic for you and potentially an increase in your search ranking.

4. Check your backlinks

Ensuring you have backlinks to your website from highly trusted Google websites is also key to SEO success. Check your Google Analytics to see how many backlinks you currently have from key websites and then make a list of key target websites that are relevant to your audience and may include content from you in the form of an article and a link to your website that will help you grow your traffic and organic search ranking. Paid SEO tools can also help to identify competitor backlinks that you may also wish to target.

5. Check your site speed

Site speed is often neglected but is incredibly important from an SEO and user experience perspective. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if your site takes more than 2 seconds to load. You can run a site speed report using Google PageSpeed Insights which will identify what you need to improve on your site to speed it up.

If you need help with your SEO, BookMachine Creative Agency can assist you with all aspects of your SEO including a full audit of your website, competitor research and building quality backlinks. Contact us to find out more. 

Abby Coften is Head of Marketing at BookMachine Creative Agency – helping book publishers and education brands grow their business with stand out digital marketing, interactive training and unforgettable events. Abby has over 18 years’ experience in education and non-fiction marketing specializing in all aspects of digital marketing. If you need specialist help with your digital marketing contact us at BookMachine Creative Agency.