5 SEO Tips for Optimizing your Content and Website

While Google and other search engines continually update their algorithms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) foundations remain the same:

• proper site structure
• keyword research,
• and high-quality content.

Follow these tips below to improve your SEO and help your business be found online.

Keyword Research

If there’s one component to SEO, everyone has heard of its keywords. While keywords used to be the main factor in SEO, their influence has evolved. Now keywords must be well-researched, carefully chosen, and strategically used within your content.

So what is a keyword? It’s a word or phrase that searchers use to find content online. When brands pay attention to what their prospects are searching for —and the words they use to search — they can use these same keywords to connect with potential customers looking for similar products.

It’s essential to look for highly searched keywords with low competition. Mix short-term and long-form keywords. For example, “hotel Chicago” and “hotel Chicago West Loop reviews”. This blog post from Semrush outlines several free keyword SEO tools you can use.

Content

Content is key to SEO as it is how you reach and engage audiences. Once again, you want to think about the people searching and engaging with your content. Write in a conversational tone people will connect and respond to and that search engines understand.

To increase visibility on the search engine results page, you need to focus on relevant topics within your industry. For example, if you own a furniture store, you could post content offering decorating tips or how to pick a sofa. Providing prospects with informative and valuable content puts you top-of-mind when they’re ready to make a purchase.

Don’t forget to write a stellar meta description for each web page. This is the copy that appears in the search engine results page (SERP) underneath the page title and URL.

A meta description can encourage potential visitors to visit the website. It gives a preview of the content and what value the page offers. Writing it well is important. It can also help search engines understand the content, ultimately improving its relevancy for specific search queries.

Today, content must be informative, engaging, relevant, and shareable.

Content comes in many forms:

• Blog posts
• Web pages
• Infographics
• Video
• White papers and eBooks
• Long-form articles
• Social media

Build Backlinks

A backlink is created when one website links to another website. You may have heard people refer to ‘inbound links’ or ‘incoming links,’ these other terms for backlinks. To maximize the impact of your content, it is important to invest time in promoting it and creating backlinks. Both of these activities are essential to making your content successful.

Link building is an important part of SEO. It can bring people to your website, and make your brand more trustworthy. This helps your website to rank higher in search results. Google admits backlinks are one of the top-ranking features.

There are many tactics to building backlinks, but a few common ways are:

• Guest blogging
• Mentioning influencers in your content
• Creating high-quality, shareable infographics

SEO-Friendly Website

When it comes to SEO, remember you’re working for two customers — the humans searching for content and the bots crawling and indexing for search engines. Algorithm updates have drastically improved the ‘humanness’ of bots, but there are still many differences, and you want to optimize for both.

Creating a well-structured website that is easy for users to navigate will compel a casual visitor to stay longer, increase page views and decrease bounce rate. Creating pages optimized for search can be complicated. It is best to work with a professional agency or web developer for optimal results. New Path is an established agency with the expertise needed to achieve success.

Here are several areas of focus for making your website SEO friendly:

• Page Load Speed
  Both people and search engines prioritize a website’s page speed. A faster-loading page provides a better user experience and improves engagement. Studies show that users tend to abandon web pages that take more than a second to load. This leads to decreased satisfaction and increased bounce rates.
• Mobile Friendly
  More than 60% of searches are on mobile devices. As more users access the internet through mobile devices, it is important for content to be optimized for mobile devices. Optimizations include simplifying navigation, optimizing images for mobile viewing, and ensuring content is easy to read on small screens.
• Site Security
  Websites should protect user information such as personal data, payment information, or login credentials to prevent unauthorized access or misuse.
• Site Map
  A site map lists the most important pages on your site, making sure search engines can find, prioritize, and crawl them.
• Internal Page Links
  Linking to different pages on your website can benefit your site in several ways. It helps search engines understand the structure of your website, passes authority and enables users to navigate between relevant pages.

Local SEO

Local SEO is becoming more critical as more people continue to use mobile devices for search. With the rise in mobile search, search engines have begun showing more local results for searches.

You need to be optimizing your content and website for your location(s). Make sure your website makes it clear — to people and web crawlers — where you are and what you do. List your company on Google My Business and with local business directories.

Keep in mind how people speak. With the increase in mobile usage and voice assistant devices like Alexa, comes an increase in voice searches. Voice search is a direct influence on local search. Focus on questions.

Ultimately, SEO can help your business grow as you build relationships with your audience, provide a better customer experience, establish yourself as an authority, convert leads, and generate revenue.

Therefore it is essential to understand what SEO is, how it can help you meet your digital marketing goals, and evolving best practices.

Learn more about New Path Digital’s SEO services. 

Blog Last Updated on 8 months by New Path Digital