SEO is short for search engine optimization and if you're running a business with an online presence, you just can't ignore SEO.
That's because it will be difficult for you to get in front of your audience because your competitors with great SEO have already attracted them.
It doesn't have to be this way though, here are 7 things you can look for to get your SEO right:
- LOOK AT YOUR BACKLINKS
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors so they're a part of your SEO you should be very careful with when building links, that's because they're one of the most common causes of Google manual penalties.
Here are a few tips you can use to get great backlinks pointing to your site:
Tip#1: Remove Links From Bad Link Neighborhoods
If you get links from spammy sites in the past or participated in schemes where this kind of link was exchanged, you should get your site out of those.
Tip#2: Get Links From Notable Mentions
When you start publishing consistently in your industry, people will notice you and share your content with their audience.
Some of these mentions will be without links so you can contact them concerning that, it usually works because they mentioned you first anyway so they know you.
- CHECK YOUR OLD CONTENT
Freshness carries a huge quality score and that makes sense because most people want current results, that's a pointer that it'll be a relevant post.
Look at some things you can do with your old content:
Tip#1: Update It
Many posts on your site will get obsolete after some time. That “link building techniques” post you wrote in 2015 will probably not be relevant today.
Those kinds of posts need updating and not just the content, the post design and template are other parts you should update.
Tip#2: Repurpose Old Content
Some of your old posts or sections of them can still be relevant today, but their current content form could be too outdated to drive engagements.
You can convert your best posts into podcasts or audiobooks, make some of the PDFs and use these as lead magnets on your landing page.
- CREATE A MOBILE FRIENDLY SITE
Mobile search is getting bigger and some large sites even have a customized version of their site for mobile users.
You might not have the resources to do this for yours as only a full-fledged web design and development agency like Chennai Creative can manage this but there are still things you can do, start with optimizing for the human thumb.
Most people use their thumb when browsing on mobile so you should make any buttons you have on-site large and responsive to touch from a thumb.
Then optimize your images, so they appear clearly and don't affect site speed.
If your site runs on content management systems like WordPress, some of the plugins aren't optimized for mobile sites so you don't need them.
Some of these plugins take a lot of space on your server so if a few lines of code can solve the problem, you don't need a plugin.
- EVALUATE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR CONTENT
Google evaluates content so if your content isn't ranking, you should check some key metrics of the content on your site.
Start by running a plagiarism check, Google hates copied the content so you should make sure the posts on your site are original.
Use grammar checker tools to confirm that your posts don't have basic language errors and you should try to write in a conversational tone so everyone will understand.
Check the click-throughs for the calls-to-action on your site, if people aren't taking action, it shows that either your instructions aren't clear or they're not persuasive enough.
The bounce rate is another marker of engagement on your site. A high bounce rate on a page that isn't a gateway page (a page that directs traffic to another page) isn't good.
- LOOK AT YOUR ON-PAGE SEO
On-page SEO is all about the things you can control to get your pages properly optimized.
Start with your permalinks. These links shape the identity of every page. Include the primary keyword of your page in the permalink.
Make sure the URL is short and descriptive, someone should look at the link and have an idea of what that page is talking about.
The permalink “link-building-techniques” is quite descriptive because anyone looking at that knows the page is about the link building techniques you can use on a site.
Your title tag is another key part of your on-page SEO, try to keep your primary keywords as close to the beginning of the title as you can as this helps boost its ranking.
- ANALYZE YOUR KEYWORDS
When someone types in a query into Google, that's a keyword right there and the results will show sites ranking for that keyword.
It doesn't matter what industry you serve, there'll be thousands of keywords you can get for your site in that industry, the problem usually lies in targeting high-competition keywords.
You can't rank for those, so you have to focus on the low-competition or the long-tail keywords instead, and there are many ways to mine these keywords.
One way is by using the Google related searches function which you'll find at the bottom of every search.
You could also check forum-like sites like Reddit. Many people ask questions on these sites and that's good because most questions are long-tail keywords.
The only thing you'll need to do on your end is getting those questions and writing a post on them to publish on your site that can serve as a resource for that topic.
- DON'T IGNORE YOUR COMPETITORS
While you may not be getting it right currently with your SEO strategy, a simple search will reveal that there are competitors in your niche doing it right.
Free tools like Ubersuggest help you with this and the way to go about this is simple. Get a low-competition keyword and search for it on Google.
Get the links of the posts ranking for that keyword and plug it into the Ubersuggest search tab to get relevant metrics like traffic and backlinks to that page.
Decent traffic will point out that this is a keyword many people are interested in and few or no links prove it's not a competitive keyword and something you can rank for.
Conclusion: Ignoring SEO isn't an option if your business depends on getting the attention of the billions of people who search on Google daily, there are things you should look at to get your SEO fixed and the techniques in this post can help you with that.
Leave Your Comment Here