There is no point in investing time and money to create a beautiful website if your customers can’t find it. But how do you make your site stand out in the sea of content on the internet? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is how to help customers find your site when they search on Google, Bing and Yahoo. By creating your site correctly and optimizing your keywords, you will drive traffic to your page and increase sales.
1. Find the right words
Think about the terms your customers might use when searching for your product or service on the web. If you sell appliances, for example, are your customers likely to use common words like refrigerator or negative words like refrigerator?
Make a list of 20-50 keywords, then head over to Google AdWords. Once you’ve created an account, if you haven’t already, you can confirm that the keywords you’ve chosen are frequently used in online searches.
You can also use a Google AdWords product called the Keyword Tool to find additional keywords to build your list. Use your keywords on each of your website pages to help them rank higher when potential customers search for those keywords.
Start by using the keywords in the URL, which is the address that appears in Internet browsers for each of your website pages. Also include them in your title and your metadata description (a short text that tells search engines what your content is about).
2. Focus on your unique gifts
Remember that you are competing with other businesses for the attention of potential customers online. To stand out from the crowd in web searches for your company, search for keywords that match your market differences, such as your unique offering or geographic location. Competition is also fierce for keywords you buy in pay-per-click campaigns, where ads for your business appear above or next to free search results. You pay the search engine company every time your link is clicked. Again, you should focus on niche keywords if you don’t have a big budget.
3. Don’t overload your site with keywords
As Google’s web user guide says: “Build pages for users, not search engines.”
If you sprinkle keywords throughout your content, you can spoil the meaning and annoy readers, so don’t do it.
Your priority should be to make the text clear and easy to read.
4. Create links to your site
The more sites that link to your site, the higher your search ranking will be. Ask related site owners to link to your site. Provide links to theirs for linking to yours. Focus on good links. Linking to your website from a business or university website will get you more than a dozen links from random blogs.
5. Publish high-quality, high-quality content
The main function of a search engine is to help people find answers to their questions. So your best strategy for getting more traffic is to create engaging content (articles, videos, and photos) that provide good information to your readers. Make sure you update your content as often as necessary. A good content strategy will also position you as a thought leader in your field.
6. Take care of people
Social media is a great partner in your SEO strategy because people use social media as well as search engines. They often search for companies or products using Facebook’s search function, for example. Your business social media profile will also rank in search results when people search for your business or related terms.
7. Make sure your website is user-friendly
Have a clean and easy to navigate website. Make sure visitors immediately understand who you are and what you offer. Use multiple titles to improve readability and include your keywords in titles. A brand name stands out in search engines and will help you rank higher. Site speed is also important for SEO. The last thing you want to do is annoy your visitors with a slow site. Finally, you’ll want to make sure your website is optimized for mobile platforms. Search engines penalize websites that don’t display speed and popularity.
8. Measure the results
Free and inexpensive tools like Moz, SpyFu.com, SEMRush.com, and Google Analytics will give you a better understanding of your site’s SEO performance and tell you more about your visitors – how they found your site ( search engine, referring site, etc.), their location and the duration of their stay on each page. This blog post has more information about analyzing your data to improve your SEO performance.
9. Be patient
Check the results from the first day, but don’t expect immediate results. It usually takes a few months to rise well in the search engine rankings. Also, remember that SEO is always changing. What works today may not work in two or three years. Stay active and stay up-to-date with new changes that affect status.
Most of your users will never go past the first page of search results. A good position means appearing on the first two pages of search results. After the third page, almost no one will see your page. So look up!