The internet is a fierce battlefield. Behind every search, there are millions of websites in competition with one another to climb to the top of Google. Through search engine optimization, websites have the opportunity to grow visibility in organic results, improve rankings, increase traffic and build awareness around their brand. And while those are all benefits to your brand, it’s ultimately not about you - it's about the audience!
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
The goal of SEO is to ensure that users are getting the most relevant content for their search queries. From the words on your website to how your site links to other relevant and trustworthy sites on the web, the goal is to build a search-friendly website for both your business and your audience. Fortunately, improving SEO sometimes simply means designing your website in a way that search engines will understand.
How to Improve SEO Rankings
Search Engine Optimization requires continuous management to achieve results - and while search engines are smart, they still need support to provide the best user-experience for the users who search the internet. By making your content readily available to search engines, SEO will boost rankings so your audience is more likely to reach your audience. Ready for the climb? Follow this checklist to rise to the top!
- Include engaging, high-quality content - Be sure to answer the questions your audience is searching for online.
- Constantly update content - Relevancy is a key factor to social media success. Content should be timely and constantly updated to achieve greatest results.
- Make sure your website is mobile optimized - Nothing ruins the user-experience more than a website that does not allow users to search in the way they choose. More than 60% of all searches are done through a mobile device. It is no longer an option to ignore if your site is optimized for mobile.
- Do a keyword search - Determine which keywords are most relevant to your audience to begin incorporating them into your site and content.
- Place relevant keywords in meta descriptions - By placing keywords in the meta description, search engines can more easily understand what your page is about and index it appropriately.
- Add keywords to headlines and subheads - Headlines have a big impact on how pages rank on search engines. Do not miss out on an important opportunity.
- Use keywords in HTML - The meta tag that appears in the HTML code of your web page helps to tell search engines what your page is about.
- Remove ad clutter - Ad clutter competes for the user's attention which ultimately takes away from their initial search, therefore search engines will penalize great content for chaotic distractions.
- Link only to trusted and respected sources - Guilty by association! Do your research and only associated with highly trusted sites to increase rankings.
- Increase your loading speed - We live in a world of immediacy. Slow load speeds relate to a poor user experience and will increase your bounce rates from your site.
- Shorten URLs - Link shorteners can hide UTM parameters, display better on social sites and are much shorter in terms of characters which makes them more user-friendly.
- Remove Flash – Google doesn’t understand Flash content because it is fundamentally different from HTML on webpage URLs. Analyzing links in the Flash code and text snippets does not make Flash search-engine friendly.
Search Engine Optimization is a skill that is highly sought after for most marketing strategies. It requires a lot of trial and error to achieve the best results and continuous management to be successful. Remember, results do not happen overnight! Implement these simple steps and continue to work on your SEO efforts consistently and the results will follow!
Want to boost your website even more? Find out how we can help!
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