Nearly 75% of searchers start their searches on Google, and the first five results on Google get 67% of all clicks, making it obvious that SEO is extremely important.
But where do you begin? SEO is a long, on-going process that truly never stops. And during that process, it’s easy to get hung up on the mechanics of it and forget what actually works. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by SEO, or just feel like you need to get back to basics, these 7 tips will help you boost your rankings and grow your audience.
- Keep Your Site Fast
Site speed is an extremely important ranking factor. If your site takes too long to load, a visitor will likely exit and head to the site of your competitor. Make sure you are constantly updating your site and removing anything that’s slowing it down. This includes large files and pictures, extra old pages you aren’t using anymore, extra widgets, plugins, or features you no longer need.
2. Link to Other Websites
Link building to other relevant websites is an extremely important SEO tactic. While you might be hesitant to direct traffic out of your website, but it actually makes your site a more trackable resource. Make sure to only link to reputable, trustworthy sources.
Plus, those sites may see that you’re directing traffic to them, and return the favor.
3. Write for Your Site Visitor
You can tell when you head to a website and the copy was written just for the search engine crawlers, not actual humans. Always write for a real visitor first! Make sure that the inclusion of keywords doesn’t come off as clunky or robot-like. Write copy that will help someone, and you’ll be rewarded for you valuable content.
4. Earn Backlinks
Content marketing is all about creating high-quality, engaging content and creating in people the need and urgency to link to you and share your content on social media.
When you create great content, other people will want to share your valuable resource. Focus on creating something really valuable, and you’ll earn more links throughout the web.
5. Integrate Analytics
You might be doing great SEO work, but if you aren’t tracking your results, you’ll never know! Before you even write your first blog, make sure you have an analytics tool set up. Google Analytics is a great choice, as it’s free and widely used.
Start tracking your weekly traffic, most popular pages, and referring channels. Keep an eye week over week and determine what’s moving the needle on your search rankings.
SEO takes a lot of work across a lot of different channels and aspects of your site, and it helps to try and nail down exactly what’s working, and what isn’t.
6. Don’t Forget Meta Descriptions
These work as the calling card for each page of your site. The meta description is the first section that people see when Google serves up your page to search users.
Don’t duplicate titles or descriptions across your site, as you may get penalized. But that should make sense if you remember tip #3! Be as helpful as possible for the actual visitor when you write your web copy, and you’ll be headed in the right direction.
It might be time consuming to go through and edit old descriptions, but it is absolutely worth it.
Hopefully these 6 tips provide you with the direction you need to help your site out. If you remember to tackle a little bit of your SEO strategy every day, you’ll see results in no time! And if you need a little extra help, contact us for a consultation.