Whether you’re taking over, improving, or just beginning with your SEO strategy, the basics are not that hard. They are mostly common sense. There is a lot of science that has gone into SEO development. It is constantly changing as search engines like Google continue to update their algorithms. As such, a little direction might be appreciated from time to time. Keep reading for some tips and a little bit of direction.
1. Know Your Keywords
For a start, you can’t do much if you don’t know what keywords your target market uses to find solutions to their problems – solutions that your company can solve. This requires a little research. Put yourself in the shoes of the potential customer who is looking at your product or service. How would you go about finding solutions to your problem? What would you type into your search bar? Start searching and see what sites pop up. Look at the words used in these for guidance.
2. Write High-Quality Content
The key here is to use your marketing intuition and create engaging content that is valuable to your target market. SEO experts at Excite Media stress how important new visitors are to your online business. It is important to include content that answers questions your visitors may have, providing them with insight. Moreover, the content you create needs to use appropriate keywords in a way that is organic and natural.
Don’t try to fill your pages with keywords in an attempt to boost your site’s ranking. It won’t help your search ranking. In fact, it could actually hurt it quite a bit. If you are caught, search engines can penalize your site by lowering your ranking or completely removing your site from their searches. Don’t be repetitive.
3. Use Keywords in Your Website Page URLs
Do not overlook your page URLs. They are important for your SEO as this is where your keyword research comes in handy. Your page should talk about your product, and the URL for that page should include the product or the specifics you are trying to explain why your product is the best. Focus on common and most searched appropriate keywords. Look for the one that has a higher ranking.
There are a couple of quick, easy, and free ways to check search ranking. Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner, where you type in keywords. This allows you to get an idea of how popular they have been in terms of search volume. You can also use Google Trends and get a quick graphical comparison of interest over time.
4. Don’t Overlook Page Titles
It is important to create interesting titles for your web pages. Make sure they grab your target market’s attention. After all, people are not going to read them if they are not interesting.
Shorten your title, use strong words, and make it eye-catching.
5. Review Every Page for Additional Keyword Placement
Now that you’ve created high-quality content for your target market and have attention-grabbing headlines to engage them and encourage them to read further, go back and review what you’ve written. Look for places where you can organically insert keywords. Consider how you can switch a sentence around to include a keyword.
Do several review passes to make sure that you have not missed any opportunities. Consider going over it a second time around, just to make extra sure.
6. Improve User Experience
A good user experience is becoming more and more important in strong SEO rankings as it plays almost as big of a role as the content. Over the last few years, Google has evolved to place a much higher emphasis on sites that deliver quality user experiences across platforms as well as different devices. When designing a webpage, work with your web developers to be sure that your website is easy to navigate. Make sure that each link works and that they take your visitors to the next bit of information that you want them to look for.
7. Hire an Expert
If you can afford it, it is a good idea to hire an SEO expert to ensure your site is truly and sufficiently optimized. An SEO consultant or agency can audit your site and look at how it is performing against your most important keywords as well as provide you with a prioritized list of actions to help you take your site to the next level. You can click here to visit First Rank for the best SEO services.
The great news is that you don’t have to be an SEO genius to make sure your website is well situated for organic search engine traffic. After all, this is the main goal of SEO. Use these simple tips outlined above to improve your SEO strategy.