To succeed in SEO, you must be able to make it work for your business by aligning it correctly with the business goals. You must know precisely where to focus so that you can devise strategies that ensure all SEO work well. Even the best strategy cannot ensure smooth functioning of SEO unless you do a prior checking to ensure that the system is ready to perform the functions in the way you want.  

After devising the strategy, you must create an action plan. The best practice entails creating a checklist of the actions and verifying that every action is feasible so that you do not face any uncertainties when carrying it out. This would ensure that things are smooth when you implement the strategies and help in earning better search rankings, which is the ultimate goal. However, you must not rule out the possibilities of facing difficulties for which you must have some contingency plans to overcome it.  The areas of SEO where you must focus to ensure smooth functioning would become clear on going through this article.

Identify keywords

Nobody knows your business better than you do and you must have known about the audience behavior that tells you about the habits and trends in searching.  You would know best what they search for and which keywords they mostly use during searches. Keywords are the lifeblood of SEO that not only keeps it alive but also makes it grow. Get a grasp on the keywords that surface commonly in your business niche and study the trend to make a list of keywords according to its priority of usage and ability to drive traffic. Identify the keywords that drive maximum traffic to websites because these keywords are the ones most loved by searchers as well as search engines.   When you work for both search engines and the users, you fall in line with the best practices of the industry. To initiate keyword research, make use of Google Keyword Planner.

Know about the competition

Once you are done with keyword selection, it is time to focus on the market in which you operate to gauge the kind of completion you face. Knowing the competition is essential because to create the appropriate strategy you must know where you belong and what challenges lie ahead. Ascertaining the difficulty level paves the way for the right strategies. Know how competitors are faring and find out what makes them do well.  To determine the competition, obtain a search list by using the chosen keyword.  The first ten results, leaving aside paid advertisements, form the core of the competition. Study each website carefully to figure out the reasons why these are doing well. It would provide insights for building a better campaign.

Focus on quality content

High-quality original content has the powers of elevating your website to great heights, and you must create appropriate content that the audience likes and derives value from it.  This is the most crucial aspect of SEO and perhaps the most difficult one. When users find content that is informative and useful, they not only consume it but also would like to share it with others. While viewers stay engaged to websites longer due to good content, the sharing enables wider outreach.  Sharing also enhances the authority of sites that ultimately favorably affect search rankings.  How much success you get from SEO would much depend on your capabilities of churning out high-quality content that keep the audience asking for more.

Keyword in page title

Create attractive titles for the pages and ensure that the titles contain keywords. Unless the title is attractive, it will not draw the attention of viewers. Insert keywords in the title that will attract search engines that get a hint about the website and the content from it.

Insert keywords in headers

Creating content is not enough because you have to present it intelligently so that search engines can make out what lies under the content. A lot depends on the way you organize content as it makes the difference between the good, better and the best. The content layout with header and subheadings by breaking up the content into small parts is the most accepted way of presenting it. This helps in quick understanding by identifying exciting portions easily and focusing on it. However, do not forget to place exact keyword phrases in subheadings.

Practice link building

Do not ignore link building. Quality content and proper placement of keywords make the website attractive to viewers as well as search engines. Riding on quality content that enjoys sharing, you start acquiring links from other good quality websites that finds enough merit in the content. More quality links you acquire better rankings you earn.

These methods, when done correctly, can give a considerable mileage in marketing. For more guidance, log on to http://www.bestsourcemarketing.com/.

About the author: Steve Richardson is a well-known name in the internet marketing industry. He has been a mentor for many SEO companies including the one you find at http://www.bestsourcemarketing.com/. He is currently heading a digital marketing company that he founded about two years ago.