Search engines are often the biggest source of website traffic, so understanding how to optimize your website to attract searchers is a vital skill. But for regional publishers, the value of being easily found by searching online goes well beyond their own websites. 

SEO for regional publishers is arguably the single most important skill for a publisher today. 

How search engines work: Search in a nutshell. It all starts with keywords and search terms. Search engines match the terms people key into the search box with what they know about billions of pages on the web. They rank those pages around search terms. So your starting point for any search marketing is: Which words and phrases will potential customers use to find me?

Being in the top three or four results on the first page of search results makes a huge difference to whether your page will be clicked on. There are two ways you can get to the top: by optimizing your web pages and by paying.  The first is referred to as organic search; the second, logically enough, is paid search. 

Keyword intent ties into search intent, which is defined as the purpose of a user’s search. The goal is to focus content exclusively around topics with specific search intent or keywords during several stages throughout the conversion funnel.

The more specific the content, the better chances you have of connecting with all kinds of possible customers.

The ranking factors, relevance, authority, and user experience (UX) can be positively affected by keyword intent. Building content with keyword intent for SEO is especially effective when a content marketing strategy is focused on very distinct content that aligned with your funnel strategy and internal KPIs.

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Overall SEO Approach for Regional Publishers 

• These strategies should be utilised on any publisher website, to maximise the efficiency of the site and achieve high growth:

• You should optimise your website architecture

• The content published should be high quality and relevant to you and your brand

• Your site needs to be optimised for mobiles, there is nothing worse than having to access a mobile unfriendly website from a phone

• Optimise your links, images, headers, images and meta data

• Do your research! Don’t just dive into the world of publishing without getting a feel for your target audience.

• Track your progress and learn from it

• Create interesting content, use strong keywords and utilise social media.