How to grow your share of search

In the world of search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising, increasing your share of search is all the rage these days. But what the heck does that mean?! Great question. Let's straighten out some question marks.

What is Share of Search?

Share of search (SOS) is a metric that measures the number of times a specific brand or product is searched for relative to other brands and products in the same category.

A brand’s share of search is the percentage of all searches for a specific keyword that led to a click on the brand’s website. So, if your brand accounted for 30% of all clicks on Google SERPs for a keyword, you’d have a 30% Share of Search for that keyword.
This metric can show you how visible your brand is on the web. It can show you if you have enough presence out there to attract new customers or if you need to work on increasing your visibility.

How can you improve your Share of Search?

By definition, SEO is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant searches in Google’s organic search results. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to get attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.

So how do you optimize your site’s visibility? This article will walk you through a seven-step process to make sure all of your on-page elements are optimized correctly.

1. Evaluate your site

The first step is to evaluate your site and determine what needs to change. You don’t want to spend a boatload of money (or time) to change your site if it already looks great and ranks high in searches. To get started, install the free Google Search Console on all your sites and set up Google Analytics on all your sites. You can see the current status of each page on your site, including those still under construction, with these two powerful tools. Then compare your rankings to competitors in your niche and determine why their pages rank higher than yours. You might also want to check on your site’s performance in Google PageSpeed Insights. Now you’re pretty much a pro already.

2. Search engine optimization basics

SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, adding content, doing HTML, and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks or inbound links is another SEO tactic.

3. Keyword research

Keyword research is the process of evaluating which search queries are most likely to convert through your website. By selecting high-volume, low-competition keywords and publishing content around them, you can achieve higher rankings in search results, attract more visitors to your site and generate more leads for your business.
There are several methods for performing keyword research, like using a keyword tool like Google Keyword Planner and reviewing your own site’s analytics.
These methods can be used independently or together to identify the best keywords for your SEO strategy.

4. On-page optimization

On-page SEO is the act of optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO, which refers to links and other external signals.

5. Technical SEO

The technical side of SEO is just as important as the creative side because search engines need to be able to find, crawl, understand, and index your pages for the content to be searchable in relevant searches.

6. Link-building fundamentals

Ah, link building… It’s a fundamental part of SEO; however, as with many other aspects of SEO, it’s relatively easy to do badly and very difficult to do well (great news, huh?)
The term itself has gotten a bad rap over the years. What was once synonymous with smart is now synonymous with manipulation. We know that the old, outdated tactics just aren’t cut it anymore — and we’re okay with that!

Link building for SEO is essentially dead. But why? People are getting more sophisticated than ever regarding how they build links and who they trust to help them with it.
That’s because link building, at its core, isn’t only about what kind of tactics you use. It’s about doing something valuable in the eyes of people who matter to you, then earning a backlink in return. (Or an email list signup, a share on social media, or whatever else.)
The easiest way to understand this concept is to consider it in terms of popularity. If many websites link to a page, it must be good, right? Therefore, search engines tend to give that page more authority when ranking it in search results. This is why SEOs call links votes – each link from another site is like a vote for that particular page or site.
However, it should be noted that not all votes are counted equally. Google has repeatedly stated that natural links are best and that buying links to manipulate PageRank is a violation of their guidelines.

7. Local SEO basics

Local SEO is optimizing your website for customers in your service area. When done correctly, local SEO can help businesses gain more customers and more sales.
There are several things businesses can do to manage their local SEO, but here are the basics.

  • Claim and verify your business listings on Google My Business
  • Make sure all your listings have consistent NAP data
  • Get listed in relevant local directories
  • Start a blog and produce great local content
  • Get active on social media
  • Ask for customer reviews
  • Measuring and tracking the success

 

Conclusion

There’s no trick here, but a little bit of secret sauce. Ideally, you do the things search engines like and avoid the things they don’t, whether or not you fully understand why the algorithms behave in the ways that they do. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by writing lots of keywords and repeating them 4,000 times on every page of your website. Write naturally, write for people, and you will be fine.

 

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