SEO is sometimes overly complex, despite its potential complexity. It's simple to fall down the SEO rabbit hole and spend a lot of time getting little or no returns.
With the aid of this article, you will be able to sort through the clutter and concentrate on the four main SEO pillars that will help you become more visible in 2024 and beyond.
The four pillars of SEO
The four main SEO factors that website owners should think about are:
- Technical SEO: How well your content can be crawled and indexed.
- Content: Having the most relevant and best answers to a prospect’s question.
- On-site SEO: The optimization of your content and HTML.
- Off-site SEO: Building authority to boost trust and rankings.
You can increase your organic search visibility, traffic, and engagement by methodically addressing these four SEO pillars.
1. Technical SEO
It can be a little intimidating to learn technical SEO. However, you must have it to ensure that search engines can access and read your material.
Your content management system will handle a large portion of this, and Google's Search Console will assist you in comprehending the technical aspects of your website.
Here, the primary things to think about are:
- Crawl: Is your website crawlable by a search engine?
- Indexing: What pages should the search engine index and why is that clear?
- Mobile: Is there a good mobile experience offered by your website?
- Speed: How quickly do your webpages load on desktop, mobile, and other devices?
- Technology: Is your website optimized for search engines?
- Hierarchy: Is the information arranged to facilitate classification?
Technical SEO should be easy to cross off your list if your small business uses WordPress (or a comparable CMS) for your website. A large, custom website with millions of pages makes technical SEO considerably more crucial—and problematic.
A large portion of "technical SEO" in 2024 and later is actually integrated into your CMS and website. Working with a developer who understands SEO concepts and creates websites that are appropriately structured and optimized for search engines is crucial. By doing this, you ought to be well on your way to becoming an excellent SEO.
Note: If your company is small or micro, try not to get too caught up in this or feel pressured to do everything flawless. Just try your hardest! We still see a lot of websites that are basically doing everything incorrectly and still rank highly!
2. On-site SEO
You must optimize the content on your website once your technical SEO is sound.
Structural optimization
Making sure your website is organized so that Google can determine the significance of each page is your first task in this regard. Consider your website to be like a filing cabinet. Sections on the website are drawers, pages are files inside the drawers, and the website itself is the cabinet.
You should be able to comprehend how everything fits together and be able to sketch this structure on the back of a napkin.
- Home
- Services
- Service A
- Service B
- Locations
- Location A
- Location B
- Team
- Department
- Team Member A
- Team Member B
- Case Studies
- Case Study A
- Case Study B
- About Us
- Contact
You understand the picture, and maybe Google does too. By arranging your website in this way, you set the stage for a page to be optimized and give context for a page even before Google has looked at it.
Page-level optimization
Now that you have a logical framework in place, you can optimize each page separately.
Here, the key areas to concentrate on are:
- Keyword research: Understand the language of your target audience.
- Descriptive URLs: Ensure each URL is simple and descriptive.
- Page titles: Use keywords naturally within the page title.
- Meta descriptions: Craft meta descriptions like they were ad copy to improve click-through rates.
- Content optimization: Sensibly use keywords and variations in your page copy.
- User experience (UX): Ensure your site is a joy to use and navigate.
- Strong calls to action: Make it easy for your users to know what to do next.
- Structured data markup: Help Google understand your content.
It should be quite easy to layer on-page SEO if you have taken the time to properly build your website. If it would be helpful, list all of your pages in a spreadsheet along with the keywords you wish to target for each one.
Many tools that can help you with the specifics of optimization are available that will evaluate a page's optimization for a particular term.
Additionally, don't consider this a one-time task. After the website is indexed, you can improve your optimization on a page-by-page basis by obtaining a lot more information from Google Search Console about the keywords that each page ranks for.
3. Content
The king is content. Isn't that the saying?
In a way, that is accurate. Your material is contained within your website.
Prospects may learn from your material what you do, where you do it, who you have served, and why they should use your company.
If you're clever, your content should also assist your potential clients in achieving their objectives in addition to these apparent brochure-type components.
We can broadly classify your content for service businesses under four categories:
- Business Information. Who you are and why people should care.
- Service content. What you do and where you do it.
- Credibility content. Why a prospect should engage with your business.
- Marketing content. Content that helps position you as an expert and puts your business in front of prospects earlier in the buying cycle.
Different types of content require different approaches from SEO. When it comes to credible material, such as case studies and reviews, SEO is frequently overlooked, but in an E-E-A-T world, this is a missed chance.
For instance, I just finished renovating a UK home built in the Victorian era. The 140-year-old, dilapidated home is dubbed "The Money Pit"!
It was challenging to find qualified individuals to assist with this project, and we ultimately chose the following:
- Finding via localized search results.
- Using due to the clear examples of relevant experience and expertise.
While E-E-A-T might appear to be yet another acronym in SEO to avoid, in actuality, it simply stands for what we, as customers, desire.
You will only rank higher, get more visitors, and turn those clicks into paying customers if you change the way you think to clearly communicate your E-E-A-T in your content!
Additionally, make sure that all of your marketing content—not just the apparent service pages—is optimized, including case studies, portfolio entries, and testimonials.
The best scalable approach to advertise your company to a broad audience for larger firms is to have a strong content marketing and search engine optimization strategy.
Since there is no cost per click, you are scaling your marketing without also increasing your spending, which usually results in the best return on investment.
You've got a successful combination of strategies when you add in some remarketing and other advertisements that build on this initial organic touch.
Make sure your entire SEO strategy and your SEO strategies are in sync. Too many local businesses still take a "paint-by-numbers" approach to SEO, hiring firms or utilizing generative AI tools to create blog content that will never rank.
Produce material that aids in your clients' discovery or selection of you, then concentrate on optimizing it.
4. Off-site authority building
All SEO rivers eventually flow into one place: authority development.
Historically, the key to establishing your authority has been link building—an SEO tactic that will be widely misused and demonized by 2024.
Authority is still a component of the E-E-A-T method and is essential to building high organic rankings. Still, it can be the most challenging aspect of SEO to master.
"Connect what should be connected" is the greatest way that the late, great Eric Ward said it when he described the proper link-building approach.
This simple yet elegant theory rectifies the historical link building mindset of "more, more, more." Only links from reputable sources are acceptable.
This frequently means that in order to scale our link building efforts beyond the simple strategies, we must provide content worthy of links. Where it makes sense for you to have linkages, you have them. Easy.
Despite having millions of links, Wikipedia has probably never engaged in link building. This is due to the abundance of helpful stuff they have that is connected to. These are genuine, organic links that enhance the website they link to, add more context, and act as the actual glue holding our hyperlinked world together.
The foundation of your link-building strategy should be this form of organic link. This might need you to go back over the content on your website and produce something worthwhile first, but if you can do it flawlessly, you will be half way there.
On this foundation, any safe, scalable link-building approach ought to be constructed.
Summary
When SEO is divided into four main components, it becomes easier to handle.
- Technical SEO guarantees that search engines can correctly index and crawl your website.
- Optimizing on-page elements gives search engines useful hints about hierarchy and relevancy.
- Investing time and resources into useful content that establishes your knowledge and responds to inquiries from clients creates the foundation for rankings.
- Taking a strategic yet authentic approach to external authority building solidifies your website's standing as a reliable source for pertinent information.
To continuously enhance these four pillars, be sure to set specific SEO goals and monitor your performance KPIs.
