For example, the H3 heading above, “Use headings for readability,” indicates that this is a subsection of the “Optimizing your content” section. Headings are mostly important for showing the logical organization of a page. John Mueller of Google says that’s not necessarily the case. You may have heard that you need keywords in your headings to rank highly. Headings - the text in your content that’s larger and often bolder than the main content - help crawlers and readers understand the structure of your content and its main points. Encourage clients and colleagues to reference and link to your website and blog.Include references to any sources you cite in your content.Have a detailed About page and Contact page on your consulting website.If other sites link to and reference your content, this is an indication to search engines that people find your content reliable, informative, and authoritative. A backlink is simply a link back to your content from some other place on the web. Including author profiles for blogs or information about the site owner on an About page are good ways to showcase this information.īacklinks are another way to establish authority. Understanding who authored the content on your site helps search engines gauge how reliable the content is. Google’s creator guidelines stress the importance of clarifying who is behind the content on your site if you want it to rank well. That means getting other sites to link back to you and including explicit information about yourself and your credentials, not just on your website but also on any blogs or articles you publish. Google prioritizes sites that demonstrate “ expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.” You know your stuff, but you have to make sure Google knows it too. Some of the highest-volume keywords are hard to rank for, simply because of competition. The higher the search volume, the more traffic you’re likely to get, but be modest in your aspirations. You can’t possibly rank for every single keyword, so find a keyword research tool you like and look up the search volume for your various options. This can be as simple as reviewing related searches at the bottom of the Google search page, or you can use Constant Contact’s SEO tools to get a more complete list of options. Brainstorm some potential queries within your target category, then check for related searches. Once you know which intent you’re targeting, you can start doing keyword research. Navigational intent: The searcher is looking for a particular site or even a product page.Transactional intent: The searcher is ready or almost ready to buy.Keywords including “best” and “comparison” are common here. Investigational intent: The searcher is going deeper into a topic, often to make a decision.Informational intent: The searcher is learning more about a topic.That’s why SEO experts have come up with four basic intent categories to help marketers target their content. Targeting user intent means knowing not just what topic a user is searching for, but why they’re searching for it. Once upon a time, you had to match the exact wording that people used to search.
Here’s how to help surface your content to the readers who want to see it.
It gets your expertise out there and attracts the notice of potential clients with valuable information and advice.īefore that can happen, searchers have to know that your content exists. Optimizing your contentĬontent is an important marketing tool for consultants. To make that happen, you have to optimize two things: your content and your tech. If your SEO is successful, Google and other search engines will place your site higher in results for key terms - ideally, above your competitors. It tells search engines that your consultancy site is authoritative and helpful to searchers. SEO helps people who are looking for your services to find your site. Look at the difference! What does SEO do for consultants? In this graph from Backlinko, click-through rates for results on the first page are left of the dotted line with the second-page and later results on the right. Your goal should be to get on the first page of results for key terms.