There is no point in creating volumes of content for your website and blog, if you are not optimizing it.
It is like preparing to run for the city marathon and not actually attending it in the end.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) makes it easier for your content to be found by people on the web, and isn’t that the ultimate purpose of your content — to be found and read in the first place?
With Google making constant algorithm changes and reversing the rules of the SEO game every few months, learning how to optimize your website may sound intimidating, especially if you are a small business.
So, how do you keep up with SEO in 2019 and what are some of the main tips and tricks to keep rocking the SEO game?
Below you will find some SEO tips to help you optimize your site like a pro.
1. Do your homework on keyword research
Targeting the right keywords is an essential basic in SEO, which hasn’t changed much over the past years. Doing your homework on keyword research is an important step towards link building, content marketing and on-page SEO, and if you are not doing it right or not doing it at all, you are simply wasting your time on the rest of your SEO efforts.
Use a tool such as SEMrush to get a better understanding of the words and phrases that are worth targeting.
Make a thorough review of how your current keywords and phrases rank in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and make tweaks and changes according to the keywords competitiveness and demand.
Set realistic expectations and do not aim for a highly competitive keyword (with let’s say 2000 searches per month), where you cannot rank at the top 30 in the SERP for even lower competitive words. The free keyword planner tool by Google will help you get an idea about the competitive keywords in your industry.
2. Don’t underestimate the power of on-page SEO
On-page SEO is getting increasingly overlooked in favor of other factors that affect off-page SEO. However, just as with a well-conducted keyword research, a thorough on-page optimization will set up a nice base for your overall SEO efforts.
Pay special attention to the following:
- Optimize your page URLs: Make sure they are well read, make sense and include keywords that you target. Preferably, keep them short.
- Optimize your page titles and descriptions: Your page titles set the direction of your keywords. Try to get the main keywords in your page title to increase your chances of ranking higher. Your meta descriptions aren’t a factor when it comes to rankings, but may drastically improve click-through rates, so you better work on them as well.
Tip: To see how your page titles are displayed in Google, use an info command and then add the URL of the page you want to be displayed.
- Pack your content with keywords and phrases: Add strategic keywords and phrases to your text, but make sure you sound natural at the same time. Ideally, content that is over 800 words will perform better than shorter texts.
- Continuously update your content: Many do the mistake of writing tons of content and forget that it’s there. Set up audits, and refresh your content on a regular basis to always offer the freshest information in your industry.
3. Outbound and inbound links
Getting links from high ranked websites can drastically increase your visibility and Google ranking. Ian Cleary from Razor Social describes their strategy to get as many outside links as possible: “When a brand mentions us and doesn’t link to us we reach out to them and generally get a link. We get a lot of mentions online so we have an opportunity to really grow our link profile and generate substantially more traffic.”
Outbound links are as important as the inbound ones, as Google will penalize you if you are linking to low quality sites or sites that are irrelevant to your content.
SEO is a constant and cyclical process, and hopefully the above tips will help you get started. Don’t forget to continuously measure and test your keyword performance, and you will get to that ranking you are aiming for. If you don’t have experience in the field, is always better to trust a digital SEO agency for reliable SEO services for better results.
