Search Engine Optimization

01Know your audience who you want to reach

Think of yourself as answering the following questions:

1. Who do you want to reach? Age? Sex? Annual income? Geographical location?
2. What websites do they visit?
3. What content format do they prefer to consume?
4. What are their needs?
5. What needs are the current search results not meeting?

02Map the topics and keywords you want to stand out in the search engine

When mapping topics and keywords, think about the target groups outlined in the first point. What topics will attract the desired audience to your website?

Create a list of topics that interest your audience the most:

• New securities account
• Verification of the existence of a securities account
• Bank account opening and management
• Why do investors choose LHV Bank for Securities?
• A securities account is required for stock exchange transactions
• Great comparison: which bank offers the cheapest transaction costs
• How to start investing in Tallinn Stock Exchange?
• Securities account management fees

When searching for topics, we recommend using Google search as your primary source of information. The first results clearly show what topics competitors have already written about.

You can do this either manually or by using a tool that helps you analyze different topics on your competitors’ pages. I recommend using BuzzSumo, SEMrush, or SEranking.

Next, start with keyword analysis to find specific keywords that match the topics listed in the previous step.

I recommend following the Google Search Engine recommendations when creating your primary list.

This gives you a quick overview of the keywords that people are actually searching for.

Now prioritize your keywords according to your buying interest, search volume, competition, and relevance to your business.

Finally, choose 1 keyword to optimize your page/blog post for.

03Plan content creation

Now is the time to plan the content you are going to create. As you can already guess, content planning is based on the topics and keywords you worked on in the previous phase.

Remember that your goal should be to display content on your website that will get people to share it.

Your goal is to outperform your competitors in terms of content quality.

How to measure if your content is good or not?

Good content is something that makes your ideal customer share their experience or new knowledge with others.

Be it the real emotion that your piece of writing creates in him or the knowledge he or she has just learned from your blog post.

Create value with your content for your customer

Create content that covers your keyword from start to finish

The aim is to provide the reader with as much information as possible and related to the search interest.

If you liked this article, please share it organically without asking you to.

Think about the fact that if a person searches for a keyword on a search engine, the content that comes up would be 100% satisfying to their needs.

It is important that the reader receives the necessary information from your blog post and does not have too many additional questions.

Excessive additional questions make you want to find out more about this topic.

If you are unable to provide it on your own website, it will look for additional information on competitors’ websites.

Go deep with one topic

A wide range of content materials covering the same topic is a good strategy to use.

This helps to create an expert opinion for ideal clients.

People will associate you and your website with the topic you are writing about.

A good example is our blog focused on digital marketing.

If our readers have a professional desire to set up Google Ads, they will first come to our blog, educate themselves on the subject, and then start developing a solution plan.

Keep in mind that you’re not creating content for just one keyword – bidding on one keyword won’t help you rank higher in search results, but rather inhibit it.

Going deep with one specific topic helps to create authority

Authority is also needed for Google.

Google considers two aspects when considering authority:

• high-quality backlinks;
• E-A-T model.

Anyone can say that he or she is an expert in a specific field

The E-A-T model helps to eliminate con-artists.

• Health;
• Security;
• Finance;
• News;
• Legislation;
• Public administration;
• Shopping;
• Other topics related to a person’s money or life (studies, nutrition, etc.)

All of these topics are closely linked to human well-being.

Google’s goal is to provide search results that don’t endanger people’s lives or turn them into the hands of scammers.

How Google ranks the authority of your page?

1. Be specific in the “About Us” section or create a separate page to showcase who you are and how your journey started
2. Create “Contact” page that is easily accessible to everyone
3. Showcase references on your page
4. Use backlinks that refer to used sources in your articles
5. Add “Privacy policy” and “Terms of use” to your page

External links that point to your homepage also build trust in Google’s eyes.

Getting Google to accept or recommend authoritative websites in your field is a big plus for Google.

So when planning your content, you need to think about how to direct people to share your content on their own.

04Create content

Now it’s time to start creating content based on the keyword you’ve selected.

Select the appropriate content format

Enter your keyword on Google and see the first search results.

Are they all “how-to” guides? Product ratings? Videos? Service pages?

The top pages clearly tell you what buying interest Google believes your ideal customers will reflect for that keyword.

To get first with this keyword, it’s a good idea to use the same format to create your content.

The example below shows that three out of 4 are service pages.

As a financial services company, you would like to optimize your securities account service page for the keyword ‘securities account’.

Write

Three ideas for writing content:

• Go to the details. Long content articles are referred to 77.2% more than short articles;
• Analyze the pages that came to Google for this keyword. In order to stand out from the competition, it is necessary to create content that is largely better than what is currently available to people;
• Look for trends that currently offer people talk. You can gather information about trends from the following sources:
  • Ahrefs;
  • SEranking;
  • Google Trends;
  • AnswerThePublic.

Update your existing content from time to time

It’s a good idea to update your existing content from time to time.

This helps to keep the article already created relevant, up-to-date and useful for the reader – even 4 years after the article was first published.

If you have invested so much time in creating content to make it the best article that is informative and useful to people, why waste that time and money in the long run?

Reuse previously created materials.

Google gives an easy advantage to updated content in the search engine.

05Optimize your content from the get-go

On-page SEO plays an important role in SEO activities.

Here are 3 aspects to focus on to bring your content to the search engine more:

1. Add your keyword to the website URL, title tag, and title;
2. Write a meta description that will get people interested in your blog article;
3. Use keywords, synonyms, and related terms throughout the page.

Create content with readers in mind

Google search engine optimization is important, but your content is consumed by real people, not Google’s robots. Make sure people like it and find it valuable.

When writing keep in mind the basics of SEO copywriting

SEO copywriting is a way of writing text that is understood by both Google’s robots (higher position in the search engine) and the people who read it (higher readability percentage + shareability).

Writing only for Google will make your writing monotonous and difficult for people to read.

If you only write to readers, your articles may not come up with critical keywords that might be needed to get noticed in search results.

Good SEO copywriting helps you to:

• Create more backlinks to your website;
• Reduce website bounce rates;
• Increase the time spent on the website;
• Increase average clickthrough rate;
• Make content on social media more viral;
• Start a discussion about this topic in your community.

Read more about SEO copywriting from this Backlinko blog post.

Web content needs to load quickly and look good visually

An attractive and fast-paced website helps reduce bounce rates and increase article sharing.

Large photos dramatically slow down your website. To prevent your article from opening too slowly for the photos you’re using, we recommend using a web tool that “compresses” your photos into smaller files.

For the best overview of web page speed, we recommend using the Google PageSpeed Insight Tool.

This tool will give you a specific list of activities that will help you improve your website’s speed and thus create better opportunities to appear in the Google search engine.

Grammar

For texts in Estonian, ask colleagues to review their articles or the copywriter to edit the material.

Use Grammarly software to check the grammar of English texts.

The aim here is to create content that is easy to read and understand.

06Create a backlink strategy

Backlinks are important in SEO activities outside the website.

Backlinks help increase the domain authority of your website – the more quality backlinks from authoritative websites in your field to your website, the better.

To get backlinks, it is recommended to create a specific action plan.

Every time you create content for a website, think about how to get people to share your content:

• Is the content you create more informative than competing articles?
• What are these pieces of information that create a “wowzers” effect in people and the desire to share a piece of writing with colleagues or other professionals in the field?
• When writing an article, could you involve a Key Opinion Leader in your field to help share your content with your followers?
• Is there a company, website or blog for which your article is so important that they would be willing to link to it on their website?

We recommend starting with a backlink strategy already in the content planning phase.

07Goals and KPIs

Setting goals helps you create a clear path you want to take with your activities.

SEO is a long-term strategy.

Google’s results don’t change overnight, and competition for keywords is getting fiercer every day.

Therefore, it is critical to keep an eye on your results and activities.

Choose the goals and KPIs you like for your SEO activities.

These are the metrics you use to decide whether or not your SEO activities are working.

It is wise to set goals in the planning phase – this will help you avoid stupid mistakes when starting work, which would otherwise cost you tens of thousands of euros in lost sales revenue.

A typical mistake that is made is to link the end goals to the short-term goals of SEO.

Such as an average position in the search engine or an increase in domain authority.

These metrics need to be monitored and good if you have an overview of them.

But business goals should not be forgotten.

Goals that will help you keep your SEO engine running sustainably.

Sales are generally a business goal that all marketing activities should reach at one point.

Also, set intermediate KPIs to help you measure progress:

NB! When setting goals, take a critical look at your business and try to find the right KPIs to keep track of.

• Freemium user signup;
• Contact Query Quality Score;
• Webinar registrants;
• Newsletter subscribers.