Perhaps the best way for businesses of any size to generate leads and attract customers is through search engine optimization. The criteria that websites need to follow to reach the top of search results often fluctuate, but the hard and fast rules rarely change. That is, web pages that offer varied entries, timely updates and high-quality content will succeed in reaching users who look for information on certain keywords.
However, it is important to remember that though the implementation of details from certain algorithms will yield unique visitors, a website still needs to have certain elements and features to retain customers. In fact, repeat views can often be considered more valuable than one-time hits. Consequently, organizations looking to engage in social search optimization are obligated to provide valuable content, media and resources to make sure that people use their web pages often and in detail. Here are some of the best tools to help accomplish this feat.
Video
The promise of Web 2.0 has come to pass and revolutionized how people navigate the online world. Whereas once websites were constrained by the processing power of computers and the transfer speed of data over networks, today HD videos and other media-rich files can be opened almost instantaneously. Companies should take advantage of this and include videos of some sort within their online platforms.
Such videos can take a number of different forms. They can be links to informative videos that are hosted by other organizations or could be generated by a company itself to explain products or services. Remember that videos in general will help with search result rankings, but in-depth and interesting ones will make people want to watch as well as expect good things in the future.
Pictures
It has been a while since one could operate a website that didn’t have any images on it. However, this is largely for design purposes rather than for the pictures themselves. Many sites use stock photos simply to make a page more appealing and interesting to look at. In fact, a collection or album of high-quality photographs can spice up a page and provide additional resources that consumers will find appealing.
For instance, companies that hold events (or operate in the same industry as a major related event) could provide entire albums of images from them. While hosting such albums on a site can be costly and demanding of memory, many sites such as Flickr exist precisely so that people can create entire video streams and link them to another external website. Photos on a web page could also involve people around the store, in the office or even customers themselves.
Text
Even novice SEO experts know that the key to search engine algorithms involves content. What isn’t so well-known is the fact that long pieces of well-written texts are especially appealing. Even from a non-SEO perspective, resources that are informative and useful will be valued as important tools by customers who visit a website.
Consequently, organizations should strive to include useful white papers, essays or news stories that provide a lot of detail. These documents don’t even necessarily have to be generated by a business itself. Rather, if they’re accessible by an external link and properly accredited to the organization that created them, customers will see the primary web page as a resource for how-to demonstrations, studies of markets or explanations of certain services.
News
The more timely and relevant a website is, the more often people will return to it. It requires a lot of time and effort to become an independent creator of news stories, but it is considerably easier to become an aggregator of relevant news topics. Determine what categories of news are important to a business and collect them daily so that consumers will be interested to see what has turned up since their last visit. A web page that looks the same every day isn’t going to get much more traffic besides that which comes from people who have a pressing need to visit.
