Seo Tip Sheet: What You Need to Know to Win Over Google

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SEO TIP SHEET: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO WIN OVER GOOGLE

In order to ensure that your promotion reaches the largest audience possible, having an SEO strategy is paramount. As you may know, SEO, or search engine optimization, is a practice that works with Google’s algorithms to improve the placement of your landing pages on Google Search. Why Google? Studies show that Google owns 65-70% of the search engine market share over its competitors.

Since a staggering 75% of users never scroll past the ﬁrst page of search results on Google, and 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results, an SEO strategy comprised of best practices will put you in the best position to market your promotion to a wide audience.

In this list, we’ve compiled our top tips to nailing your SEO strategy:

Proﬁle your audience:

When building on-site pages, including the landing page for your exclusive oﬀer, it’s very important that it’s tailored to the audience you want to reach. The language, images, and overall feel of the page should embody that of your target audience. For example, if you are targeting military members, include a message that salutes their service and use patriotic images to provide a more customized experience. How does this contribute to SEO? The better the user experience is, the more likely it is to get clicks. Thus, the more relevant Google will view the content.

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Create a list of top keywords:

In tandem with knowing your audience, you should also research what search terms they may be typing in on your website and on Google. These keywords are your main ingredient for creating content that will both resonate and continually show up in Google Search when someone types those keywords into the search engine. To ﬁnd out what keywords your audience is using, you can:

Use Search tools: Google Adwords Keyword Planner, Bing’s keyword research tool, and Wordtracker are all tools you can use to research keywords you’ll need to incorporate into your landing pages and copy

Utilize your website analytics: Using the Webmaster Tool, you can see which keywords are being associated with which landing pages on your website, as well as what terms people are searching to ﬁnd you.

Have an SEO friendly framework in place

Having a framework that abides by the Google algorithm guidelines is key to an SEO-friendly site. There are a few basics that will set you up for success:

A title tag that is speciﬁc to your audience and focus: This tag should include your keywords, but be written as naturally as possible. It should be one short, concise sentence.

Meta description for Google: The meta description is a short summary of what the page is about. This is what you see below the URL on Google search pages. A well-written description is likely to get a large number of clicks, and the higher the click-through rate from Google, the more relevant the algorithm will view your content. Be aware that this does not show on the landing page itself, it is just appears in the Google search results.

Clean URLs: URLs should be attractive and search-engine friendly, meaning that they avoid numbers, question marks, etc. They should simply be a 5-10 word summary of the article, using at least one keyword. The best case possible is that it’s a sub-directory page, meaning that your main page URL shows, followed by the subpage name. For example, a clean URL would be: sheerid.com/learn-more-about-military-veriﬁcation

Proper HTML tag use: When coding your page, HTML tags are key to setting up the proper Google friendly formatting. Headlines should always be in H1 tags, which tells Google that that is important to readers. A sub-headline would be in H2, followed by the body in H3, and so on.

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Fast page speed: Always make sure that your loads quickly, and users don’t have to wait more than a few seconds for the page to fully come up. You can check your Google page insights to see how fast your page is loading. Additionally, make sure your plugins are up to date and that your site is mobile-friendly. Google’s PageSpeed Tools can help your team optimize your page speed.

Avoid No-Indexing: When it comes to the landing page, make sure there isn’t a “no-index” tag on the page. If you have this enabled, Google’s crawlers won’t be able to ﬁnd it, thus, not ranking it. Google also doesn’t see footer links, so if your landing page is only linked in your site’s footer, Google will not rank the page.

Proper image use: Images are necessary for proper esthetic look of your landing pages, however, they also need to be properly tagged for SEO. Images require meta tags to tell Google what they are. You should make these tags speciﬁc, explaining what the image is and why it is there. You should always use smaller images, as image size impacts how fast your page loads. Here are a few examples:

• Bad image tag = SheerID laptop • Good image tag = Laptop displaying SheerID student veriﬁcation

Get social: To get extra SEO points, always make sure your landing page is social media enabled. Likes, shares, and retweets are all good engagement according to Google, so you only benefit from adding social sharing to your page. When your exclusive offers are protected by SheerID, there is no risk to your offer going viral.

Write meaningful copy

Above all else, your page should be engaging, concise, and well-written. Engagement is what Google values over anything else, but there are a few rules for content creation to be aware of:

Headlines should be eye-catching, with subheadlines underneath.

You should also have your keywords incorporated as much as possible into the copy, without sounding like it’s forced. Content should ﬂow naturally. The tried and true SEO rule is, “Don’t write for the search engine, write for people”. Therefore, only include the “exact match” or “long-tail” keywords if they make sense, but don’t force it.

When writing copy, the higher up on your page the keyword is, the better.

Include at least a paragraph of text on your page. If you only have one or two sentences on your page, it won’t rank well for organic search.

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Whatever you do, keep people interested or solve a problem.

Work to create backlinks

Creating backlinks is a process, however, it can dramatically increase your page rankings. Backlinks are links to your landing page from other sites, such as within an online article or blog post. A great way to begin this process is to do some outreach to influencers and ask them to add your offer to their lists of discounts or review your product. The more attention your offer gets within your targeted community, the more backlinks you’ll receive.

By following these basic SEO tips, your offer will be more likely to organically appear in your target customer’s search results. When your exclusive offers are protected by SheerID’s eligibility verification, you can make your offers easy for your customers to find.

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