What is SEO and why do you need it?
Implementing SEO on your company’s website is more important than you may think as it enables visitors to find your site more easily. Eager to learn what you can do to increase the traffic on your website? Find simple fundamental steps to build better knowledge in your SEO strategies and optimisation.
Definition by MOZ: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
Why SEO?
- 24h salesman – people can Google and find your business at any time.
- Increases traffic
- Better ROI
- Better brand awareness
- Builds trust with the customer
- Competition is doing it – if you’re not on Google you can’t compete with others who are
Firstly remember, not all SEO actions create equal results. To achieve real results, you need to use efficient components which success percentage is higher – such as creating SEO content whether it would be a blog or building up a page structure. Being mindful and informed about the different components and methods will help to save you a lot of time.
“93% of online experiences start with a search engine” – Neil Patel.
1. Website analysis and planning out interesting content
Starting with SEO planning, you should analyse what your customers are searching for. This enables you to understand what your audience is interested in reading and for you to start creating relevant content which can offer real value to your business. Educating the readers also allows to build trust with the customer. Taking into consideration that Google updates its SEO algorithms all the time – for your page to be competitive to other similar ones, your SEO needs to be kept updated and relevant.
2. Keyword research and useful tools
Think about what keywords people would use to find the service or product you are offering. There are also many helpful tools so if targeting keywords, think about not only the traffic but rather getting the right traffic so those visitors would convert. There are many different tools to use when creating SEO content, you just need to find the right one for your expectations.
RankMath for WordPress and Yoast are helpful to conduct keyword research. Enter the keyword or key phrase you’d like to rank for and check whether you’re using them often enough and in the right spots. Google Search Console is a free web-based SEO tool to track both the indexing and crawling stats from Googlebot while also providing metrics to help optimize a website for organic visibility. If you want to see better results on Google Analytics you need to work on the information based on Search Console.
3. Link building
Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. It is a critical part of ranking higher in the search results – depending on the competition, it most probably is very difficult to rank without links (or it just will take a lot of time). Let’s say there are two competing websites – both same quality, but one has external sources (high-quality links) which give it a major advantage in link building. It is one of the most important SEO components right now so focus on having updated links and information.
4. Titles, descriptions & logical structure
Be mindful about your titles, descriptions and think about how well-arranged your page is – focus on creating a logical and understandable page. For example, if you have an article that is purely a tutorial on how to do something, do not mix it with another topic. Write compelling titles and meta descriptions, use keywords that your competition is not using – remember, even if competitors rank higher than you, it doesn’t necessarily mean people won’t click on your site.
Different approaches – black-hat & white-hat SEO
SEO can also be categorised as white-hat or black-hat SEO. White-hat SEO is the so-called correct way to do: writing fresh and relevant content, linking to/getting links from relevant industry sources, relevant page titles and tags and having natural keyword density. The black-hat method is not an “honest” way to rank higher as it includes duplicating content, blog comment spamming, keyword stuffing and link farming.
Summary
Taking into consideration the points discussed above, thinking and adapting SEO is a must. Key points to remember is that SEO is not a short-term strategy to boost your website popularity, however, if implemented correctly and though well through, SEO can be a great in updating the popularity of your website. Remember, that in some industries it takes longer to rank than others. It is important to maintain integrity. Most importantly to learn and improve your adapted SEO techniques, practice and analyse everything. Act on new updated information to improve the performance and regardless of the excellent choice of keywords or linked websites, content is king.