When making the most of your online reach, and trying to drive organic traffic, there’s almost nothing more worthwhile you can pursue than solidifying your SEO approach.
There are many services out there that make SEO their entire modal framework, providing a worthwhile and integrative approach for companies hoping to climb the search engine rankings so they may appeal to more people without directly paying for exposure.
In case you’re unaware of what SEO is and how it can influence your business, permit us a short explainer.
Put simply, search engine optimization (SEO) is a means by which to naturally raise the search result rankings of your content online. Search engines like Google are incentivized to direct their users towards the best and most relevant content when they enter search terms, as if they provide poor-quality or irrelevant returns, they may alienate their user base.
For that reason, Google, and other search engines spend their time defining their algorithm which adds ranking might or punishing weight to your search ranking depending on how good, how well-formatted, and how relevant your content is. This is how they ensure search terms like ‘restaurants in New York City’ actually return restaurants in this State, rather than blogs talking about restaurants, or content that just happens to be the last to mention it.
In order to continually refine this algorithm, search engines continually update how they grade content to be more friendly, accessible, and open to great websites producing good content. This means that it’s possible to use a few autonomous means of enhancing your own standing in the SEO algorithm.
Here’s what that might entail:
Play The Game Fairly
It’s important to play the game as fairly as you can. It might seem as though an algorithm is there to be ‘hacked’ or ‘gamed’, but actually Google and similar services are almost always one step ahead as far as that goes.
For instance, SEO is often helped by using keywords in your content that can be latched onto and perhaps related to queries entered into the search engine. However, some websites decided to game this system by using keywords around the page and stuffing them into content, using font colors to hide them in the web page so as to avoid affecting readability.
Google have managed to punish practices like that, which can lower the SEO ranking for the whole website. They also penalize badly written content, poor website UI’s, spamming of pages with similar or plagiarized content, and more. So, provided you don’t try and cheat, and are fully committed to producing excellent content and relevant landing pages, you’ll already be off to a great start.
Perfect Your Social Media Approach
Social media channels that are properly branded and interlinked throughout your website can aid your SEO approach. Social media is also a great way to build backlinks, which are links pointing at your website from an external authoritative source.
This means that when writing a post or a landing page, be sure to post it on your social media channels, well tagged, and keep those automatic updates continuous (but not overly frequent). With active social media channels, your entire brand looks more authoritative, and your content will be weighed favorably by the algorithm.
Encourage & Embrace Reviews
Embracing Google reviews can really help your SEO standing, because it shows that people are willing to engage with your content and value you as a trustworthy and reputable source. For that reason, you should embrace and encourage honest reviews. Positive reviews can, of course, serve as their own form of marketing, and so serve a double purpose.
Yet even negative or middling reviews can also help. They show that people are willing to engage with your service, and provide a means by which you can publicly reply and show just how responsive and willing to resolve issues you are. In that manner, you are seen as a proactive firm with a presence. That helps.
Always Think In Mobile Terms
Over 65% of people use their mobile phones as their default internet devices. However, mobile phones are in no way the only mobile devices that can access the internet, with tablets, hybrid laptops, and smart devices also serving this need and expanding that percentage.
For this reason, you should always think in mobile terms. How well-formatted is your website for a mobile layout? Is the text and font readable? How easy to load is the website, and are your images compressed enough to load quickly on 3G and 4G networks?
Multi-device compatibility and seamless integration will positively weigh your SEO standing in your favor, and that can be worthwhile for obvious reasons.
Research Appropriate Keywords
You may have noticed that we mentioned keywords above, and yes, they are worth using in your content. Yet due to the world progressing, time moving on and corporate trends shifting the market, it’s true to say that these progress over time, and so it’s best to make sure you are using the most up-to-date options.
You can research the best keywords to use and how they can help rank your content via keyword strength calculators offered by many SEO agency websites. You can also further identify your keywords by using regional identifiers, so for example ‘reliable plumbers’ may become ‘reliable plumbers in London.’ This way, you can continually keep up with search query trends and the common vernacular.
Run Your Own Content Blog
A good way to build your authoritative backlinking approach is to use services called ‘blogger outreach,’ where SEO firms will write an article, link your website through an anchor text, and have that posted on a good, up-to-date blog.
However, you can also benefit from this arrangement by running your own business blog and posting good quality, interesting content. This latter technique can be very helpful, because then you can build backlinks content through people actually linking to you as an authoritative source, rather than having to pay for that.
Outside of the SEO benefits, this also serves a great purpose of showcasing the values of your brand, educating your users, and ensuring organic traffic is well-met with an informative proposition that defines the best first impression you could ever give.
Purchase A Simple, High-Value Domain Name
Domain names are often weighed on how easy they are to read and type, if they correspond to keywords, and what extension they have. So for instance, ‘plumberslondon.com’ will always rate more highly than ‘plumbers4uinlondonrightnow.net.’
It’s often a good idea to snag a .com or .net domain name if you can, as these are rated the most highly. If you’re in the UK or a specific country, country code domains such as ‘.co.uk’ can also work well as you’re hoping to appeal to a local area, and this will be favored by visitors in the same location.
It might take getting a little creative with your high-value domain name, but achieving a simple, easy to remember and extension-strong option is worthwhile. Don’t fret if you can’t quite get a ‘.com’ or ‘.net’, as alternatives exist, like ‘.io’ favored by tech firms (signalling input/output’ or ‘.co’, which has become a new and trendy means of referring to ‘company.’ Always be on the lookout to increase your domain strength.
Consider Your Reading Age
You don’t have to patronize your visitors to lower the reading age and the accessibility of your content. The easier your content is to read, the better it will do, and the more readily it will conform to SEO standards.
What matters is using proper formatting, punctuation, paragraph breaks, and correct spelling. Technical jargon can be used of course, but remember that this might not conform well to search engine queries or search term results. For this reason, keeping the reading age of your content at an accessible level can be helpful.
To achieve this, you can use apps like Grammarly or Microsoft Editor to determine the reading age of your posts before you publish them. Tailor your content a little, and see what provides the best results.
Meta Descriptions Are Key
Meta descriptions of your content in line with a post help a search engine know what to look for and how to categorize your content, which can help you identify yourself and what a potential visitor can expect when selecting your page.
Search engines love this, because well-formatted meta description help them present the clearest picture to their own users about what to expect from the results they are providing. As such, they’re a quick, clean, and totally free way of fortifying your SEO strength.
Sensible Page & Post URLs Help
Keeping sensible, keyworded URLs linking to your posts can help your page seem cleaner, your website more authoritative, and your link easier to index.
It’s not hard to see how a competent mix of those three benefits should elevate your search engine rankings. Be sure to pay attention to how this develops when writing and before publishing a post, for such a small effort, it can work positively in your favor.
With this advice, we hope you can maximize your SEO potential for the better.
