Tags – Holistic SEO
SEO has evolved over the years, and what began as a simple set of techniques that resulted in excellent rankings and traffic for your website has now evolved into a multi-faceted strategy to achieve the same objectives.
The simple tricks and quick fixes no longer work, and can actually cause long-term damage to your website and your reputation.
Today, Google wants businesses to have a detailed SEO strategy that covers all aspects such as; technical performance, valuable content, user experience, security features etc., in order to rank respectfully.
Simply, your website needs to work perfectly.
That said, traditional SEO should be put to the side and instead, a more focused effort on what your users want, and what will be the best way to help them achieve their desires.
In this guide, we will explain what holistic SEO is and the 3 main components of success in a holistic SEO strategy.
What is Holistic SEO?
Holistic SEO is all about improving all aspects of your website to make it rank higher in the SERPs.
And the final goal is to have a website that fulfils every user’s needs, at every stage of their buying journey.
Essentially, users don’t just require relevant content, but they want to consume this in a quick, user-friendly and secure way.
So, the better web experience you can deliver, the more likely you are to convert.
But regardless of that conversion type, a website that performs well in every aspect, will undoubtedly rank higher, receive more links for other websites or get shared on other social media channels – boosting your brand awareness overall.
The Holistic SEO Approach
To grasp the concept of holistic SEO, it’s a good idea to look at the 4 different stages of the conversion funnel in order to convert visitors:
- Awareness: you should always assume that your website visitors know nothing about you or your brand, and your task is to educate them. Make users aware of what you can offer them and how you can solve their problems
- Interest: when users are nosing around your site, you need to keep them interested. This can be achieved through useful blog content, for example
- Consideration: at this stage, users are trying to work out if they want to engage with your brand. So by sharing more relevant content that they can relate to, you can gently nudge them to the next stage of the funnel
- Conversion: at this point your hard work has paid off. Your users have chosen you, all you need to do now, is nurture that relationship for more sales down the line
The 3 Main Components of Success in a Holistic SEO Strategy
To understand holistic SEO, a business owner should remember Google’s strategy for search results: to assist customers in finding the most relevant information and presenting it in the most helpful way.
Therefore, a holistic SEO plan includes three components:
1. Content Design
We all know how visual content makes your website more valuable for users. But if you leave this un-optimised, it can slow down performance. Here you should consider:
- Mobile-Friendliness: if you haven’t done this yet, now’s the time. Make sure to check your site can be viewed easily on mobile and tablet devices; keep in mind clean navigation and speed
- Images: yes, large and crisp images look fantastic, but they’re a pain to load – hence why they need to be reduced where possible. Using schema markup for images can help improve a website’s ranking
- Code: sites that are built using JavaScript offer more interactivity, however it can create issues with crawling and indexing content. Don’t worry though, you can take advantage of Google Search Console to diagnose any potential issues
2. User Experience
User experience (UX) is your user’s perception of the site. If they can find what they’re looking for with ease and they make a purchase, this reflects on better rankings.
There are a few metrics you can track to determine this:
- Bounce Rate: a high bounce rate could indicate issues such as slow loading times or a lack of call-to-actions
- Dwell Time: one of your goals is to keep users on your page for longer, and one way to do this, is by offering useful and valuable content
- Web Vitals: Google has a set of metrics that broadly define the ranking criteria, such as loading speed, responsiveness/interactivity and visual stability
3. Semantic Structure
When it comes to producing content for an audience, it’s easy to overlook the meaning behind queries.
For instance, you might only optimise keywords without considering a user’s search intent. To create better content:
- Cover each topic in depth: write in-depth guides rather than shorter articles as this makes it easier for readers to get all their information in one place
- Use “normal” language: write in a conversational way, similar to how you would speak. Use shorter sentences to quickly get your point across without frustrating the reader
- Split the text: include headings, body content, metadata and more to help drive the right audience to your content and help them find what they’re looking for with ease
- Avoid “keyword stuffing”: overdoing the use of keywords will be penalised by Google
It’s Not Just About Page 1 Anymore
The goal of internet marketing has always been to get on the top page of search engine results.
The idea behind this thinking is that consumers are lazy and will not look for websites beyond the first page.
The problem though is not with achieving page 1 results. But it’s what to do with your visitors after they see you on page 1 and they come to your website.
If you’re not offering much, they will move on to your competitor’s website instead.
However, holistic SEO helps you solve this issue and enables you to design your content that will keep your visitors on your page for longer and convert them into customers.
To put it simply, the holistic SEO approach provides better content, prioritises your visitor’s needs, and makes them feel important to you.
After all, that is what business is all about: treating the customer properly and in turn, they demonstrate loyalty to your brand.
To find out more, please contact us today.
In the meantime, take a look at our SEO services here.
You may also like:
