Search Engine Optimization exists somewhere in the gray area between science and art form. The rules, the competition, and the landscape as a whole are constantly changing. A lot of good SEO boils down to judgment calls and nuance. To help you stay ahead of the game, here are seven tips to maximize your business.
1. Use Keywords Strategically
Do a little bit of research and use tools like Google Keyword Planner to determine the highest searched phrases for the content you’re writing. When you do work out some high ranking keywords, get specific. A Keyword like “tents” can pull traffic from anyone researching the pros and cons of tents. A Keyword like “buy tent accessories” is more likely to pull in users who are actually shopping for tent products.
2. Put your Keyword in page title and Headers
Putting keywords in your titles and headers is a good way to gain organic search ranking. However, you want to make sure that your title is still eye-catching or interesting and that your headers work well with the flow of your content. If your title is something like “Chia Seeds,” it’s going to look out of place and spammy in a search query. “10 Surprising Health Benefits of Chia Seeds,” on the other hand, is more likely to capture a user’s attention and pull traffic.
3. Content
All that said, don’t obsess over researching the perfect keywords. If you produce good, relevant content you’ll likely wind up pulling long-tail traffic through the use of phrases that you were unlikely to uncover during the research phase. You also need to consider the tremendous amount of competition out there. Content is really the key to standing out.
4. Adjust Navigation and Internal Links
Google ranks the importance of pages within your website based on the number of times they’re linked. If you have redundant navigation to pages that aren’t particularly important or other internal links pointing away from your best content, you’re hurting your search ranking.
5. External links
Search algorithms rely heavily on external links to determine the quality of a page. There are really only two ways to get external links: write amazing content or reach out to other website owners.
6. Use Social Media
Social media is a growing trend with online marketing and it isn’t going anywhere. Recent statistics show that 76% of marketers use social media to boost search ranking. The line between web and social media SEO is becoming more blurred by the day and its highly likely that social media content will increase in indexing on search engines
7. Go Local
Google’s Pigeon update increased ranking for targeted local content. While the beauty of the web is connecting people across the world, local internet traffic now has a prominent edge in SEO. If your business has a real world HQ to push sales, be sure to take advantage of local internet traffic to boost your search ranking.
We would love to hear from you on other tips that you might share below!