I found it particularly refreshing and interesting to upskill in inbound marketing with my Level 3 Digital Marketing apprenticeship, specifically Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as I work in paid media. You may ask yourself
“How do I show up first on Google without paid ads?”
The answer is, through SEO. Content you publish on the web can be optimised around certain keywords or search terms, but it doesn’t stop there. Here are my 5 top tips to get your brands’ content to the top of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS).
SEO Tip 1: Stay up to date with the latest trends
Search Engine Optimisation is often optimised itself! Search engines evolve and update. Make sure you keep up with the evolutionary arms race of Search Engines and get the latest SEO trends to ensure your content is as optimised as possible. The best resources I have come across for exploring the latest SEO trends are SEMrush, Neil Patel, and ahrefs. These blogs also cover a range of marketing topics and are worth exploring to widen your Digital Marketing Knowledge.
SEO Tip 2: Good things come to those who plan
The key to ranking high on SERPs is in the planning. You should center your content around cultural and contextual relevance. Here’s a SEO content template I created to help you with your very own content plan. I always work with a calendar of events and center content around key dates and around keyword research. I use multiple sources to explore what the brands’ audience would want to know relating to the brand/product, and answer it. Whether you need help with your digital marketing apprenticeship SEO implementation, or if you want to improve your brands’ SERP ranking, this template will hopefully get you to position 1.
SEO Tip 3: Internal links should be embedded seamlessly throughout your content
The more you link to your own content, the more optimised and connected your content will be…but be careful to avoid content cannibalisation. Make sure each post answers a different question. Optimise towards different keywords on different posts so your content isn’t competing with itself. The more insight-based and relevant content you can provide, the higher chance you will have of boosting your domain authority, thus ranking higher on SERPS. You can complete an SEO audit to keep track of your content and identify any gaps. Linking to your own content can also encourage readers to continue their journey through your site. You can map out consumer journeys and direct leads through your content, down the sales funnel.
SEO Tip 4: Link to relevant, and trusted, external content
Internal linking is not the be all and end all. Linking to external content, especially to pages with high domain authority, can boost your Search Engine (SE) ranking. It’s even better if you can get them to link back to you. The higher the domain authority of the site linking back to yours, the more your domain authority is boosted, and SERP position improved. You can use this link to test the domain authority of any URL.
SEO Tip 5: Optimise your images
One tip that often gets pushed aside is image optimisation. Alt text allows the visually impaired to ‘hear’ or ‘read’ your images, but it also allows web crawlers to understand what’s in the image, increasing their understanding of what’s on your page. By adding alt text to images, you increase the chances of ranking at position 0. You also increase traffic to your site through image searches.
Conclusion
These 5 SEO tips only scratch the surface. For more information on SEO to help you with your Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship, or SERP ranking, read our blog on the factors affecting SEO.
Completing the digital marketing apprenticeship has been a great experience. Whilst I have found the content useful, and some of it new, I can recognise the greater value the course has to a school leaver, in replacement of university. I would urge school leavers, or graduates totally new to the field, to earn while they learn by exploring the Level 3 Digital Marketing apprenticeship.