Search engine optimization (SEO) involves taking action to help Google and other search engines understand your website and rank it higher. With over a billion websites on the World Wide Web, chances are there are other people trying to target your ideal audience.
If you don't take deliberate action, it will be very difficult to rank on Google, Bing or Yahoo. The good news is that SEO isn't that difficult. You can start taking action with a few basic steps.
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Keyword research
Find out what people are entering into the search bar when they land on pages like yours. You can use Google Keyword Planner to find out the most popular keywords in your niche.
There are also a variety of paid tools that will let you analyze your keywords and the keywords of your competitors. They will often tell you which keywords are the most difficult to rank. If you are a new site, you might want to start with the keywords that have lower difficulty rankings and then work your way up to the most competitive keywords.
Monitor your position regularly so you don’t miss opportunities.
Titles, URLs and metadata
Use the keywords you want the page to be found for in your URL, title and meta description. There are also options to add meta-keywords, but these are not as useful anymore.
Avoid having the post date in your URL, as this is a waste of space that pushes your keywords away from your visitor’s site line. Note that including the date in blog posts is WordPress’s default setting, so you will want to change it in Appearance -> Permalinks.
Site Content
Use the valuable keywords that you want to target in headings, subheadings, paragraphs and image captions and alt tags. Try not to overdo it or your article will sound spammy. Alt tags are used for accessibility, so don’t prioritize keywords over having a reasonable description of what is in the photo.
When you add subheads to your content, use the header tags – h2, h3, etc. Header tags help robots understand what each section of your page is about.
For years, writers were told to chop their content down as much as possible under the assumption that readers are lazy and web content is unpleasant to read. Now, SEO experts are doing a complete reversal on this advice and pointing out that long-form content not only encourages the search engines to rank you higher, but also results in more engagement and social shares from human readers. Try to make your content around 1,000 words. Photos, audio, video, charts, graphs and infographics can add also value and serve to break up the text.
Analytics
Monitor Google Analytics on a daily basis so that you can see what is working and what isn’t. Keep track of your bounce rate. If it’s over 50 percent, find out why people are abandoning your site and test different content.
Avoid deceptive headlines and make sure the content gives visitors the information they wanted to find. You can find out what your audience is interested in by checking out the types of search queries and questions that Google suggests or by looking at user-driven sites such as Quora and Reddit. This will also give you a good idea of what type of keywords and language people use when they are looking for information. You can incorporate the same words and phrases in your content.
Create content
Regular content is the best way to rise to the top of the search engines. This sends a sign to Google that this is a current and up-to-date site. It also allows you to optimize for long-tail keywords. A long tail keyword is a longer phrase that your customer might use to find your business, such as “best sushi restaurant in Vancouver.”
A good way to have constant updates is to start a blog and write a new post at least every week.
Avoid repeating yourself, because this is called duplicate content and Google frowns on it. In the past, black hat SEOs would simply copy other people’s content, create multiple pages with the same content and use other not so helpful techniques to get around the hard work of producing fresh content. You might be tempted to create a new page for each location, each target market or each service and just change a few words. However, this should be avoided. Give every page its own purpose and reason for being.
As well, you should have a variety of content. People are increasingly drawn to visual content on the web. Try video, photos, graphs, diagrams and infographics. Although Google can’t necessarily read these types of formats, you can let the search engines know what they are about in the descriptions, captions and metadata. Hosting your videos on YouTube could give you a boost. YouTube is owned by Google and their videos often show up on page one of the search results.
User Experience
A good user experience will make it easy for people to use your site. They’ll be less likely to leave and more likely to take the actions you want them to take, such as learning about your business, filling out a form or making a purchase.
Avoid pop-up ads that are difficult to close, videos that start playing as soon as you enter the site, and other things that annoy visitors and make them leave. A pop-up newsletter subscription form that occurs when the person nears the bottom of the page or is about to exit the page is OK.
Test how quickly your site loads and take any recommended actions to make it faster.
Be mobile friendly
Ensure that your site looks good on mobile, is easy to navigate and loads as quickly as possible.
Site maps
Create site maps to help robots crawl your pages. If you use WordPress, you can install a plugin for this. You can also submit them through Webmaster tools.
Build internal links
Use anchor text (the text highlighted usually in blue underline) to link to other pages on your site.
Build external links
Find websites with good domain authority and build relationships with the owners. Guest blogging, directory submissions and mentions can help you build links around the web, that will send signals to Google that you are an established player. Leaving comments on blog posts and forums may help a little, but these are usually no follow links. However, if your comment is useful, it may encourage people to visit your site, which will contribute to your ultimate goal of organic site traffic.
Social media
Being active in social media won’t benefit your SEO directly, but it will generate traffic, which is definitely a good thing. Include social sharing buttons on your blog posts. This will help other people share your content which will expand your reach to their followers.
Use Webmaster Tools
Webmaster Tools will give you insights about your search traffic and alert you to any technical difficulties, such as broken links.
Stay away from black-hat techniques
These can include stuffing your page with keywords to the point that it interferes with readability and using invisible keywords. Make sure your titles match the content on the page.
It's possible to get started on an SEO campaign on your own. However, if you want to take a strategic approach, we can help you build a campaign that puts you top of mind for your target market. Book a call today to learn more about SEO and your business.
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Shella Gardezi is a marketing, PR and SEO specialist with experience doubling website traffic and sales and getting features in national publications and on the airwaves.