Three Trade-Offs You Should Consider - Semalt Expert Advice
Here are three primary trade-off strategies you'll need to consider when developing your brand's SEO strategies. Having more SEO strategies often means you divide your attention and focus across multiple strategies, which can be both beneficial and disadvantageous. This knowledge has helped us realize that choosing the path straight down the middle may not be the best brand choice either.
With that in mind, Semalt believes that brands shouldn't put all their eggs in a basket, but they shouldn't also spread it so thin that they have several brand strategies that none end up being effective. Now, let's talk about three primary strategic SEO trade-offs to consider when making decisions concerning your brand optimization.
1. Traffic vs. Relevance
Of course, you know that relevance is important in your SEO strategy. A plan without relevance is flawed. Without relevance, users' traffic wouldn't have an interest in your product, which translates to wasted efforts. But what if that isn't the case. Many website owners fail to understand that there is a lot more to consider than amidst the eyes. But which is more important, traffic or relevance. This is where many websites lose focus and head in the wrong direction. Yes, traffic, matters but when you have the highest traffic of visitors who click only to leave immediately, you notice that there is no benefit. Your primary objective should be the relevance of the content you put on your website. You shouldn't go off chasing after traffic when you're yet to get relevant content. If you do so, you may gain traffic, but they will immediately leave your webpage loads because you aren't what they are searching for.
Pros of the high traffic and low relevancy approach
- You earn higher traffic; you also stand the chance of earning natural links from visitors. With so many clicks on SERP, other websites wouldn't hesitate to link your site.
- High traffic to your website means that there will be an increase in the number of internet users interested in your products. Sometimes, these individuals may hear of your products secondhand from visitors who would never be interested in your products. This information distribution can be in person or through social media.
- More influx of traffic means your website looks better in reports. You get to achieve impressive statistic reports from SEO experiments and other similar data approaches.
- Having more traffic to move to your site can also increase the number of relevant visits. It would be impossible for you to appear on the first page of SERP but never have a conversion. Even though your website is popping up for the wrong audience, you can experience some relevant clicks.
- A high traffic strategy can help your website reach consumers who are higher up the sales funnel and may ultimately convince individuals and stir up interest in your viewers. It will surprise you how much opinions can change in wild and unpredictable ways.
Disadvantages of a high traffic approach
- High traffic keywords are very competitive even when they have low relevance. This is a disadvantage because if you choose to gamble for high relevance, you may be at a loss when your website doesn't make it to the 1st pages of SERP. The most natural keywords to rank are those with limited traffic potential and audiences with particular needs. So opting for high traffic can be a significant risk.
- Poor conversion rates limit the frequency at which you enjoy conversions. A high traffic strategy may also pay off only in the long run.
- Chasing too many traffic topics can dilute your brand's image, making it look less specific.
Pros of high relevance content
- You enjoy higher conversion rates. By providing content relevant to your audience, you enjoy a much higher percentage of conversion in the traffic your web pages have. This boosts your chances for lead generation and more sales.
- You have less competitive keywords to target. You know what your website wants, and you have a specific audience that presents you with a uniques opportunity to enjoy less competitive keywords.
- You maintain a more targeted phycological impact on your audience. This improves your chances of convincing them to buy your product, strengthening your brand affinity.
- You have more loyal and dedicated brand customers.
- You have more relevant anchor links to your webpages.
Disadvantages of a High Relevancy Approach
- High relevancy keywords are as competitive as developing high traffic keywords. Also, having high audience relevancy doesn't always mean having high product relevance, so web owners should be careful.
- Scaling high relevance strategies can be challenging to scale, mainly when you chose not to alienate your existing audience.
- Becoming too focused on a defined set of topics can limit the perceived personality of your brand.
2. Consumer VS Influencer
It is common to believe that your target audience should be made up of people who have the highest likelihood of buying your products. However, you also need the help of influencers who link your brand with your consumers. These influencers help spread the word about your products to a broader audience. That makes them a significant factor to consider.
Closely related to consumers and influencers' questions, you will have to consider if your website should be targeted to suit the industry or a set of interests. As a B2B business, what interests your consumers applies to your business, while the influencers are those who are the leaders in your industry. These influencers may be members of your company as well as members of your competition.
As a website owner, you are now torn between choosing whose interests to follow between your customers and your influencers.
Pros of an influencer, industry targeted approach
- Writing for bloggers, journalists, and the industry you compete in is one strategy that is most likely to get you authoritative links. This allows you to pick up a tremendous amount of SEO authority with content targeted to these individuals.
- Producing content for influencers usually leads to more shares on social media.
- Influencer-focused content cab creates mutual link earning opportunities and business partnerships.
Cons of influencer centric content
- It is common to have influencers who can reach your target audience also to be your competition.
- Influencer centric data doesn't guarantee that your audience will find them appealing.
- Writing for your audience gives you a better image of consumers who will be buying your products.
- This will have a direct impact on the lives of your audience even before they purchase your products. They will also be more likely to trust you and buy your products.
- Consumer-focused content creates more traffic potential.
Cons of the consumer approach
- Consumers are really in control of the platforms, which creates links that can be helpful for your SEO strategy. Customers also really help you connect to a larger audience.
- Consumer-focused content may come off as not worthy of passing on by influencers.
3. Trending VS Evergreen
Websites find it difficult to decide whether to go for trending content topics to appeal to people's desires or content that can stand the test of time. When you invest in one type of content, you tend to invest less in the other. So what should you do?
Pros of trending content topics
- By focusing on trending topics, you create a unique opportunity to be part of the trending topics. This has SEO benefits in terms of earning links and engagements, which help you build long term authority.
- When you are the first to pick up a trending topic, you get to enjoy a higher chance of getting more traffic. It is also difficult for your competition to overtake you before interest in such a topic dies off.
- Emerging topics have limited competition, especially when they haven't been taken up by large sites. In such a situation, you can enjoy better SEO, and you can rank better.
- Cons of trending contents.
- If you pick up the same trending topic as others, you're likely not to get noticed as much.
- Trending topics only bring temporary traffic, and they are short-lived.
Pros of evergreen topics
- Since evergreen content continues to remain relevant, they provide consistent traffic to your website and allows you to build your traffic just by providing new content rather than chasing trending topis every month.
- Since it can be reoccurring, you can simply update it, experiment with it, and test it for conversion, authority, and traffic potentials.
- Since they are evergreen, your content will continue to exist, and it will always be referenced.
Cons of evergreen content
- Getting attention on the net can be difficult with such content.
- These contents need to be more comprehensive and in-depth.
All brands aren't the same, so choosing what trade-offs you should consider, you should evaluate your options to come with the perfect SEO strategy.