SEO Services For Amplified Organic Growth

iOS users have access to more than 2 million applications within the Apple App Store, and Android users have even more choice, with almost 3.5 million apps available. Without question, investing in apps is a highly worthwhile way to engage with potential consumers and online audiences - but ensuring that these apps are discovered by target audiences presents a challenge to businesses. Investing in ways to improve app store ranking is likely to provide significant benefit in the years to come, with the number of downloads for mobile applications trending consistently upwards since 2016.

App store optimization provides a way for businesses and developers to drive increased visibility of apps within the search engine of the target app store. While the overarching goal of app store optimization is an increase in downloads, the improved app visibility will organically result in a range of other benefits such as improved engagement of the target audience and brand exposure. App stores can effectively be viewed as a highly-specific search engine, meaning that SEO and app store optimization share many key components and strategic elements. Both processes focus on driving content discovery and improving indexation, but within an app store, a high-ranking position in the algorithm drives other benefits such as a higher user-perceived quality and brand scale.

From 2021 onwards, “page experience” became a key search ranking signal in the Google Search search ranking algorithm. This created a unique pressure for websites to support an optimal user experience through expert optimization, in order to sustain a high-ranking position in search results for target keywords. Page experience metrics incorporate user-centered factors such as website responsiveness, stability of web pages across a variety of device viewing options, and loading speed. Without optimized page experience metrics, websites will be unable to secure positions in segments such as Top Stories on Google searches.

Greater ranking rewards for page experience aligns with Google’s shift toward prioritizing user experience in online spaces, instead of basing ranking purely on on-site features such as metadata and on-page keywords. To provide an optimal user experience, businesses must leverage technical SEO strategies and advanced web development. Ensuring that pages load quickly despite internet connection speed or quality, maintaining highly responsive design, and optimizing rendering in web browsers are all key components that must be addressed. Google additionally indexes the mobile version of websites prior to indexing desktop versions, shining a spotlight on the importance of mobile compatibility. Optimizing for an improved search engine must begin with optimizing mobile experience, and then secondary optimization of desktop experience.

A key goal of website optimization is persuading or facilitating users to make a desired action, such as filling out forms, engaging with links, and purchasing products or services. Conversion rate, the percentage of users who perform these online actions, must be as high as possible to guarantee continued growth and drive profit. Prior to the action of conversion, there are several key steps in the customer journey. Issues at any of these stages can result in loss of a potential customer. There are the driving factors which bring traffic to the website from a variety of sources, “hooks” that convince users to carry out an action, and key barriers which may result in users exiting the site and browsing elsewhere. 

Conversion rate optimization must involve an in-depth understanding of users, including driving forces, barriers and pain points, and factors influencing user experience on the website. Without understanding these factors, conversion rate optimization is, at best, a complicated guessing game that will create limited change. Occasionally, conversion rate optimization may be as simple as fixing an error which clearly blocked users from performing actions—but more often, conversion is a highly complex process which requires empathy, research, and innovative thinking to understand. Therefore, effective conversion rate optimization requires a thorough understanding of users' needs and motivations, and data analytics consulting can provide businesses with the necessary insights and tools to identify these factors and develop innovative strategies for improving the user experience and increasing conversions.

As a commonly leveraged tool in user experience design, user personas facilitate product planning and creation that targets a specific user or group of users. With a focus on user-centered business processes continuing to grow, user personas are becoming increasingly accepted as a useful component to cutting-edge product design and development. User persona development allows creation of products which stand apart from the competition and provide a clear competitive advantage.

The key question asked by product teams should be, “Who are we designing this product for?” To achieve lasting success, a product must be created to satisfy the needs of target customers, meeting expectations and addressing key concerns. User persona design helps design teams to build a strong culture of empathy for customers by understanding customer perspective and identifying with the existing customer base. The more understanding designers have of a fictional customer persona, the more they will be able to innovatively consider the needs of real customers during the design process. Shaping product strategy through use of user personas creates a clear definition of the target customer base and guides development and prioritization of user-centered product features. Understanding the target customer base is a crucial aspect of product management, and the use of user personas allows design teams to build empathy and develop innovative solutions that address key concerns, ultimately guiding the development and prioritization of user-centered product features.

Many businesses have a general concept of customer journeys, but most lack an in-depth customer journey map that allows analysis of factors that impact the customer experience. By creating a detailed customer journey map, businesses can gain an in-depth understanding of the factors that impact the customer experience and use this knowledge for effective customer experience management, identifying pain points and critical successes to make necessary changes and ensure a streamlined and positive customer journey. Through creating a detailed map of all touchpoints throughout the customer journey, each step that leads toward consumers making a purchase can be visualized and then analyzed. Customer journey mapping is a valuable tool that enhances existing customer analytics, and provides clarity on obstacles, pain points, and critical successes throughout the customer journey. Through in-depth understanding of these steps, businesses can then make necessary changes to ensure that the customer journey is as streamlined and positive as possible.

The key to success in the modern age of business is ensuring a highly customer-centric brand. Customers increasingly value a close brand relationship, and are more likely to return to businesses that are empathetic, user-friendly, and understanding of customer needs. Customer journey mapping facilitates a more customer-centric business by allowing improved understanding of customer factors such as expectations and emotional responses, which provide guidance on how to retain customers and provide an optimal customer experience. Customer journey mapping allows issues within the customer journey to be easily identified and then mitigated in real-time. New approaches or strategies can be easily tested, and then evaluated based on customer response and analytics.

Using advanced software helps businesses and content teams to automate and streamline specific facets of content marketing. This process aims to smoothly transition manual tasks into automated ones to reduce time spent on content marketing efforts and allow redistribution of content marketing budget. Aspects of content marketing which can be effectively automated include generation of key content, content distribution, and measurement of content performance. Managing complex marketing processes such as landing page creation via automation allows a variety of tasks to be easily controlled and implemented from one interface. 

Content automation is shown to be a significant driver of ROI growth while reducing marketing expenses. Secondary to ROI, there are a wealth of additional advantages to content process automation, including generation of more high-quality leads, improved accountability of the content marketing team, and consistent growth of social media presence. Content process automation drives an improved online customer experience and reduces frequency of manual mistakes within content that could lead to decreased trust from customers.

The website that secures the highest-ranking result in a Google search is clicked on by approximately 25% of users—or more. This means that a large proportion of users click on the first search result without looking further, and reaching this #1 spot will result in a consistent flow of organic website traffic, boosted engagement, and generation of valuable leads. Websites with high-ranking search engine positions implement content pillar strategy as a component of content strategy by building interconnected pillars within a specific cluster of content. However, this is a complex strategy which must be well-executed in order to deliver results—a poorly organized content pillar will fail to be recognized as authoritative, valuable content by search engine algorithms. 

A comprehensive content marketing strategy that guides the execution of content pillar research and aligns with overall business objectives is essential to maximize the impact of content pillars on website engagement and conversions. Content pillar research must be executed to support wider business goals, by creating content pillars that have a clear purpose and consistent schedule. Leveraging content pillars in this way helps to organize existing website content to add value, and provides a base for developing impactful web content in the future. Including long-form content within content pillars is essential, as long-form content is shown to provide approximately 77% more backlinks when compared to short-form. A well-executed content pillar increases user engagement, causing users to spend more time on the website and increasing the chance of conversion.

Recently, content syndication took a hit after Google emphasized that syndicating content purely for backlink generation would result in lowered ranking in search engines. This stance was taken by Google due to the view that mass syndication aimed purely at increasing backlinks could result in the spread of poor quality, non-authoritative content that contributed little value to internet users. Due to this statement, many marketers - incorrectly - decided to stop syndication entirely. However, syndication is a highly positive factor when implemented correctly, and high-quality syndication is consistently rewarded with top-ranking search engine positions. Brands that syndicate high-quality, valuable, authoritative content are able to reap the benefits from this process without worrying about penalisation. This means that the focus during blogger and content syndication should be providing quality content, not generating backlinks.

Syndication can be viewed as an exchange between two online parties. One receives valuable content free of charge, and the other benefits from increased content exposure to new or wider audiences. Effective syndication of content delivers benefits such as lead generation, backlink creation, and driving increased website traffic. Content syndication allows brands to reach potential customers who would not have organically discovered the brand, serving to engage new audiences and improve wider brand reputation. Through this process, businesses and leadership team members can establish a clear role as thought leaders within the industry. Through demonstrating thought leadership, brands can drive a new, tangible source of revenue through gated content assets which allow potential customers to be targeted.