Newsletter August 3 2023

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Hey, Shane here,

Welcome back to Marketing Mix by Shane! SEO is a crucial part of a website's success, but it can be challenging to know where to start.

In this newsletter, I’ll show you the 5 essential SEO practices you can use to get started on your SEO journey.

What you’ll find in today’s newsletter:

• 5 Essential SEO Practices to Improve Your SERP Rankings

• Featured Tool/Agency of the Week

• The Latest Blog Updates

5 Essential SEO Practices to Improve Your SERP Rankings

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This can help you attract more visitors to your website, which can lead to increased leads and sales.61% of marketers believe that SEO is important for their online success. There’s a lot of reasoning behind businesses' belief in SEO. Websites that are ad-driven for example, could spend up to 400% more on ads if their SEO is not up to mark. If you’re just starting your business or website, it might seem like an impossible task, but there are some basic SEO guidelines that work universally.Here are 5 essential SEO practices to help you improve your website's ranking in the SERPs:1. Use relevant keywords throughout your website.When people search for a keyword, Google will try to find websites that contain that keyword. So, it's important to use relevant keywords throughout your website, including your title tags, meta descriptions, and content.But don’t just focus on the primary keyword, make sure that you sprinkle relevant secondary keywords throughout your web page as well, because you might not rank well for your primary keyword, but could get into the top 10 search results ranking for another relevant keyword.Also avoid using short-tail keywords, as 91.8% of search queries in 2023 are long-tail keywords. People who use voice assistants to search for they need also use conversational, long-tail keywords.2. Create high-quality content. Google wants to show users the best possible results for their searches. So, if you want your website to rank high in the SERPs, you need to create high-quality content that is informative and engaging.High-quality content in 2023, should be created with user intent at the forefront. Make sure that your content isn’t too long, and addresses the intent as fast and in as much detail as possible.3. Build backlinks to your website.Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They are a signal to Google that your website is authoritative and trustworthy. So, it's important to build backlinks to your website from other high-quality websites.It has also been common practice to focus on authoritative links, but a recent statement from Google’s John Mueller has emphasized adding links that are useful to the readers.Mueller stated, “Name-dropping a dictionary doesn’t fix your spelling mistakes.”This is in line with most of Google’s recent updates, which focus heavily on catering to user intent. These updates are in line with the rising use of AI-generated content on the web that adds no real value.4. Optimize your website for mobile devices. More and more people are using their mobile devices to search for information online. In fact, 63% of Google’s U.S. organic search traffic originates from a mobile device.So, it's important to optimize your website for mobile devices so that it looks good and functions properly on smartphones and tablets.5. Use SEO tools.There are a number of SEO tools available that can help you track your website's performance in the SERPs and identify areas for improvement.For a list of the best SEO tools, free and paid, check out my researched article on, “The 10 Best DIY SEO Tools & Software for 2023.”Many of these tools have helped me get 80K monthly organic search traffic and acquire 170K backlinks.