SEO significantly influences your company’s success, whether you’re a small business owner or the CEO of a Fortune 500 firm. Your SEO strategy determines the ease with which your target consumers may locate you. Since 75 percent of internet users do not even look past the first page of search results achieving this is no simple task.
Here are 12 simple SEO tactics you may use to get your business in front of new consumers:
Target Relevant Primary and Secondary Keywords
The initial step in any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is keyword research. You may produce material that draws more people to your website if you know how to use keywords effectively. The primary and secondary keywords for your yoga page are the first step.
Your primary keyword should be the main emphasis of your material. Only one primary keyword may be used per page. It must be relevant to your page’s focus, brand identity, and goods and services.
Secondary keywords support the primary topic. You’re likely to have a lot of them. They’re typically more detailed than the main keyword and represent subtopics you cover throughout your post. Try to include them naturally in your writing, but don’t force them if they don’t seem appropriate.
Write Quality Original Content
It would be great if you had high-quality, unique, evergreen content to entice users to return to your site. Original material showcases your distinct viewpoint and knowledge while also allowing readers to form a connection with you. In addition, search engine algorithms, primarily Google’s, are intended to find unique material.
Search engine optimization (SEO) and high-quality original content practitioners are more likely to see an increase in searches. Therefore, your material should ideally be thorough. That implies you must provide complete information about a specific topic. Total pages demonstrate to search engines that you know the subject.
Format Your Content According to Search Engines & Target Featured Snippets
Ensure you’re addressing the issues your readers are concerned about if you want your material to perform well. Targeted featured snippets are one way to do this. Featured snippets appear at the top of Google’s search results page. They’re intended to answer a user’s query without requiring them to leave the site. They’re apparent, practical, and likely to attract organic traffic since they appear before numbered results. They may also be referred to as SERP features.
Digital marketers seek these roles in large numbers. To obtain one, you must optimize your material to appeal to them. Even if you don’t win a featured snippet, the techniques you use to target highlighted snippets may help readers and improve the SEO of your content.
Optimize Your Page Title and Meta Description
The page title and meta description are often the first things your audience sees. Users may decide whether or not to click your page based on these alone. That’s a lot of influence for so little text, so make sure they’re significant.
Typically, whichever platform you choose to host your website makes it simple to modify your page title and meta description. WordPress, for example, includes two boxes labeled “SEO title” and “meta description.”
Here are a few tips to remember:
- Keep your page title within 30 and 60 characters
- Keep your meta description less than 160 characters
- Include your target keyword in your content
- Communicate what your page is about and what makes it unique
- Ensure your meta description and title is unique for every page
Use Short, Descriptive URLs
URL structure is a critical aspect of on-page SEO, and it’s easier than you think. You can significantly improve your URL structure and generate more relevant results with just a little work. Clean URLs allow search engines to identify your page more efficiently and improve the user experience in the SERPs.
An effective URL should:
- Use keywords: Include your primary keyword, if you can
- Be readable: The URL should be simple to understand for your visitor once they see it.
- Be concise: Shorter URLs (about 60 characters) are preferable. Because many search engines can’t handle lengthy URLs, ranking you lower as a consequence is possible.
Generate Backlinks from High Site Authority Websites
External links, also known as backlinks, are an essential ranking element. External links from reputable sources may help your site’s authority and SEO over time. Link building is a technique for gaining those backlinks.
How do you figure out which backlink sources to go after? It’s easy: look at who your rivals get their backlinks from. Then, to discover new possibilities, use the Backlink Gap Tool to compare your present backlink profile with your competition and identify new chances.
Here are a few other ideas:
- Offer to compose a guest post for other websites, particularly if you have an interesting infographic or anything else to contribute.
- Reaching out to publishers to cover any original research or data you’ve gathered for your on-site content is a good idea.
- List your firm in industry directories. You may need to join trade associations, networking organizations, or business organizations to improve your credibility.
Remove Anything That Loads Slowly
User experience is only one aspect of page load time. It may also have an impact on your SEO. After all, if a website takes too long to load, people will leave quickly, raising your bounce rate.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a free SEO tool that rates your desktop and mobile pages on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the fastest. Check for components on your page that are increasing your load time if it takes too long to load. Do you have any plugins installed that aren’t necessary? Remove them to improve the speed of the page.
Use a Mix of Links
Internal and external links can help you improve crawl ability, user experience, and reputation. These links should ideally take users to useful, relevant information.
Internal links take users to different parts of your website. They aid search engine crawlers in locating your material and encourage people to stay on your site longer. For example, you may link related blog entries together to help your audience discover more information about a subject they’re researching without ever leaving yours.
External links, unlike internal ones, are not restricted to a single site. You may utilize these to connect your readers with valuable, authoritative material on the subject you’re writing about. Before adding external links, consider that linking to low-quality information might harm your credibility.
Optimize Your Graphics
It’s difficult to resist a bright image or an image that perfectly conveys the essence of a subject. If you create such pictures for your website, ensure they’re optimized. Here are some thoughts to bear in mind:
- Size and Formatting: Make sure you use the image size and file type your readers will appreciate. If an image is too big, it might slow down your site. The picture may not load if the file type isn’t recognized.
- Accessibility: Always include descriptive alt text for each image. Not only does this assist with screen readers, but it also allows for the inclusion of more keyword-related text. Avoid embedding essential text elements in your images unless there’s another way to access them.
- Context: By including text next to your images, you may add context to them. If feasible, try to put your most significant photograph near the top of the page.
- Links: Create distinct names and logical URL structures for all of your photos. This helps optimize them for organic search and makes it simpler for others to post your images on their sites, which may result in backlinks for you.
- Test: Always try to test your pages on both mobile and desktop devices. Users are more likely to search Google Images from their phones than on a computer; therefore, optimizing your photos for cell phones might be advantageous.
Conduct Regular Site Audits
Regular site inspections are essential in keeping your website functional and user-friendly. It’s also an excellent method to notice problems you may have overlooked, such as dead links, orphaned pages, or sluggish load speeds. Then you can prioritize and address them before they become a problem.
To get started:
- Create a new website project.
- Use this method to crawl your site, selecting the number of pages you’d want to examine and then creating a path to each page.
- Provide further requirements, such as crawler settings, prohibited URLs, or URL parameters.
- Schedule your website audit by running or scheduling it.
Study Your Competitors
Chances are, you and your biggest opponents are producing similar content and appealing to a similar demographic. By examining the websites of your competition, you may discover more about effective content media or come up with new content ideas.
Begin by identifying your most important rivals. The Market Explorer tool can help you keep track of significant players in your field and how much traffic they receive. The Traffic Analytics feature can tell you how much money your competitors make and their primary traffic sources and channels (paid, social, etc.).
To get an overview of their organic search performance, use the Organic Research tool to see which pages perform well.
Continue Learning About SEO
Every digital marketer understands that Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving, and as it does, the online environment changes. That’s why understanding SEO is crucial if you want to stay ahead of the game and win more often.
Fortunately, with blogs, ebooks, podcasts, videos, webinars, and other outlets at your fingertips, you have many resources to help you stay current on the latest trends. Here are some of our favorites:
Search Engine Journal: This site covers a broad range of topics related to search engine optimization, including content marketing, technical SEO, and mobile optimization.
The Search Engine Roundtable: Get insights from some of the top minds in the SEO world with this podcast from Barry Schwartz.
Whiteboard Friday: Each week on this YouTube show, Rand Fishkin addresses a hot topic in digital marketing.
