Ever struggled with SEO? Here are 4 ways to get you started.
1) Create Original and Engaging Content
Create relevant content geared towards your target audience. Don’t just create content, create quality content that will benefit and provide value to your audience. Creating quality content with your audience in mind will increase your page visits, improve your site’s relevance, and enhance its credibility. Make sure you’re informing your audience and relating best practices.
Long gone are the days where you can just borrow quality content from another site to rank high on google. Google is constantly changing their algorithm. Since they look to provide relevant and valuable results, Google’s algorithm ranks the original creator of the content higher in search results. They know who posted the content first, even if it’s referenced on top news’ sites. Google favors originality.
2) Increase Outbound and Inbound Links
Outbound links are links to well-respected authority sites in your industry. You want to include some outbound links whenever you are creating content. However, it is most important to use inbound links or back links. These are links that link within your site. For instance, if you are writing about Financial Planning for Buying a House, and you’ve written a blog about How to Budget Wisely, you do want to reference back and link to that blog post. Moreover, if you provide these services, include links to your service page, so your audience can easily reach out to you for these specific services.
You want to keep your audience engaged and on your site as much as possible. The more you include related links on your blog post, the longer the visitor will stay on your site. This will increase your page view per visitor, as well as your blog traffic. The more inbound links, the better for your site.
Pro Tip: Remember to always make your content shareable. You want your content to create a buzz and be organically shared. Make it easy for your audience to share your content. You can make certain phrases or blocks of text easily shareable on Twitter in one click. InVision is a great example for this. (View image below). Or add social media sharing buttons where your user can choose the social media account they want to share your content with.
Invision:
Medium:
Even though you have little control over who shares your content, you still want your content to be shared with the world, especially with those within your industry or primary target audiences.
3) Write Relevant Key Words
Key words are words that people will use to find your website through any search engine. You want to make sure you are using the right key words to not just attract visitors, but to attract the right visitors. Use key words that people are most likely to search for to find your website, products/services you offer (especially within a specific geographic area), or your blog posts .
Where should you use these keywords? Use keywords on page titles, since page titles are prime real estate in terms of keyword recognition. Be consistent with your keywords. Continue to use the same key words throughout a page or blog post. This includes any images. When describing the images used on your alt tags, continue to use the same key words. Consistency is key.
And don’t forget to include the keyword on your URL. You don’t want to have “www.domain.com/blog/1231458.” The URL “www.finance.com/blog/financial-planning-for-retirement” is much effective from an SEO standpoint.
4) Write Accurate Meta Descriptions
A Meta descriptions is a snippet of up to 320 characters that summarizes a page’s content.
Take care to create well-written and compelling meta descriptions. You want people that are searching for information specific to your niche to click on your website link instead of on all the many other results. So the more relevant and accurate your meta descriptions are, the more likely viewers will click on your page. Having accurate meta description can increase your click-through rate, which in turn will lead to more conversions (assuming your website is well-designed and developed).
We hope you integrate these principles and techniques on your site. Don’t get caught up on the ever-changing Google algorithms. If you keep our advice in mind, you will be able to get to the top of search results organically.
And if you need professional help improving the SEO on your site to increase your site’s traffic and generate more leads, give us a call to start the conversation.
Keep generating amazing content.
Want to Learn more about SEO?
To learn more about SEO, you can review Google’s SEO Starter Guide.
Worried about what NOT to do, check out Google’s Quality Guidelines.
Google has recently launched SEO Snippets, which is a video series, where the Google team answered some of the webmaster and SEO questions.
References
About Vizual:
Vizual, Inc. is an award-winning branding communications firm that specializes in strategy, branding, marketing, design, and web. Since 1994, Vizual has established an outstanding reputation for providing award-winning services, results-oriented strategic consultation, and exceptional client service. To find out more about how Vizual may be able to help your organization, visit vizual.com/ or call 703-437-8018.
Media Contact: Jeff Lupisella, 703-437-8018