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Simply having a website isn’t enough to guarantee a successful online presence. You have to beat your competitors to the top of the rankings! A successful search engine optimization strategy utilizes both on-page SEO and off-page SEO to grow their rankings on search engines.
Search Engine Optimization is the practice of generating organic or "free" traffic through search engines, like Google or Bing. The internet is a large place filled with tons of information. Think about how you look for answers - most people can agree that they take out their phone and search on Google. In fact, there are over 3.5 billion searches a day on Google. By creating content specific to the searches of your audience, your website becomes more searchable online which will result in more visibility for your brand and traffic to your website. While there are many different factors for ranking on search engines, on-page and off-page are most heavily discusses.
On-page SEO tells the search engine what your website is about. Search engines are designed for the users—they want to ensure that the website contains useful information, is accessible, and can be easily navigated. Optimizing your website allows search engines to index your web pages, understand what your website is about, and rank among your competitors. On-page SEO consists of factors that you can control through your own website. In order to do this, you'll need to focus on the following:
Provide valuable content for your reader that is engaging and relevant to their interests. Unsure of where to start? Brainstorm about information that your buyer might find useful while making the decision to purchase from your brand.
Develop your keyword strategy. This aspect cannot be stressed enough! Keywords should be at the center of all content on your page. For your content on a web page to be successful, begin researching the most important terms and phrases around your business. To get started on keyword research, check out our other blog 5 Tips for Choosing Keywords that Drive Quality Traffic.
It may be hidden to the average website visitor, but it is a vital ranking factor on search engines. Make your images on your website work harder for higher rankings. Alt-text is the text that describes an image, but isn’t visible to the visitors. Search engines use it to understand what the image shows in order to provide relevant images to search queries. Place your keywords in the alt-text to aid in boosting your visibility.
The faster, the better. Search engines want to provide the best online experience to their users, so load time is taken into consideration. Optimizing images and ensuring the website is responsive will greatly improve the user experience because it will reduce immediate bounces from your site.
Interlinking your content is useful for visitors and for search engines. Allow your visitors to continue reading through your site to find more useful and relevant information. Add links to relatable blogs or CTAs to relevant content offers hosted on your website. Linking relevant information together will help your visitors navigate your website easier, while easier navigation will help lower your bounce rate. Be sure to anchor links to phrases with keywords, rather than general text (such as 'find out here' or 'read more'). But do not overdo it—less links provide more authority and power to the links you do include.
Fun Fact: search engines give more weight to the largest words. Include keywords or variations of keyword phrases in your heading for better rankings. Remember not to get carried away—your heading needs to reflect your content in order for it to help your rankings.
Meta data is a short summary of your content. This blip of description shows up in search engine results for the visitor to predetermine if the link will contain the information they are looking for or not. Incorporate relevant keywords to help your content be seen in the 155-160 characters available.
Title tags help search engines understand what your page is about. They appear in many places, not just the search engine results page. They are visible in the browser once the page is open and when shared on social media sites. The title tag is how your title will be displayed across platforms. You may not judge a book by its cover, but a visitor very well may decide whether or not to click your link based on your title. Make sure to keep your title tag below 50-60 characters; anything over 60 characters may not display properly or be cut-off.
Include the keywords in the URLs of your web pages. But before you go back and adjust any current URLs, make sure you redirect to a new link. By changing the old URLs without first adding a redirect link, or better yet, consulting a professional to make sure everything is functioning properly, your visitors will encounter errors.
Off-page SEO, as the name suggests, takes place off your own website, but still has a direct effect on your site's ranking. Just like humans have to make connections with other people to socialize in their personal lives, your website has to do the same thing to grow the social ladder. The more other sites are talking about you, the more credible you seem and the more popular you will become.
Links are the heart of off-page SEO. How do you get started with link building? First things first, it is important to understand the two types of links for successful off-page SEO efforts.
While the main goal of off-page SEO is to get external sites to link back to your site to improve your credibility and ranking, there are some non-link related approaches that can aid in your off-page SEO efforts. You might want to consider the following:
To sum it all up: On-Page SEO focuses on what your website is about and what you rank for. Off-Page SEO determines how authoritative your website is. For a successful strategy, you absolutely need to practice both forms of search engine optimization. Keep in mind – it’s the quality, not the quantity that counts!
If you'd like to learn more about how an effective SEO strategy can help your business and increase your ranking, feel free to contact our team.
