Basics Of Successful SEO

You want your website to rank well – that’s key to running a successful online business. To do so, there are several key SEO aspects that need your attention. The following are the basics of successful SEO to help ensure you rank highly in search engines.

Title, Snippet, URL, and Description

These are the first things that potential visitor sees and determines if they want to click through to your website. It’s essential that you pay attention to these areas, as you can easily be passed over in favor of another website. Additionally, these elements help web crawlers determine where in the search results your site should appear.

Content

Your content is an important foundational element for your entire website. Web crawlers pay attention to different aspects of content to rank your site accordingly. Readers pay attention to see if you’re answering their questions, whether you can help them, and whether or not they will want to visit your site again. It can also determine whether or not they share your content with others.

Additionally, your content is an essential aspect of getting inbound links from other websites. Inbound links help establish you as an authority, get your content in front of more eyes, and directly impact your rankings. Therefore, it’s essential that you create compelling, engaging, optimized content.

Sound a little overwhelming? It isn’t necessarily difficult, but it can also take a great deal of time and effort to create the most optimized content. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone. There are many content marketing services out there that can create and manage your content for you. They can take a major burden off of your shoulders.

Keyword Optimization

Keywords are important as they help web crawlers rank you in relevant search results. Without the right keywords, you can end up several results pages down the line in a category that isn’t even relevant to your website.

For the best results, you’ll need to spend time researching keywords that are relevant and that currently rank well. They should be added to your title, meta description, and a few times throughout your content.

However, it’s important that you don’t overuse those keywords. Keyword stuffing is not only annoying to the reader but also frowned upon by Google. Only use your keyword once every couple of hundred words or so throughout your content.

Also, use variations of the keyword and make sure they sound natural. Keywords like “doctor New York” don’t sound natural. You would want to revise that to be “doctor in New York.”

Putting It All Together

Again, successful SEO can take a good bit of time, research, and energy. The following tips can help.

Spread It Out

You don’t have to manage all of your website tasks at once. Instead, spread it out over several days, weeks, or months. Different website owners have different ways of doing things, according to what works well for them.

Some use a schedule such as Mondays – Keyword Research, Tuesdays – Write posts, Wednesdays – Pick Images, and so on. Others spread it out over a month, so Week 1 is all about keyword research, Week 2 is for writing, and so on. Whatever works best for you is best for your business.

Automate

Many tasks can be automated. For example, there are several posting tools available that let you schedule your posts for the week or month. You plug everything in and the tool will take care of the actual posting. By using such automation, you can schedule your posts well in advance and get a great deal of work off of your plate.

Outsource

As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of available content marketing services available to help. You can have them help with just a few tasks, like keyword research, while you handle the rest. Or you can let them manage it all. They’ll take care of whatever you need them to so that you can manage the rest.

Learn how to interpret data

If you want to be successful with SEO, you need to know how to interpret your analytics data. After all, the whole point of SEO is to improve your website’s visibility and ranking in search engines. And what better way to do that than by analyzing your website’s traffic and keywords? Here are some tips on interpreting your analytics data:

• See which pages are getting a lot of visitors – Google Analytics provides a list of site activity reports, which will show you where people go on your site and how they got there. You can use this information to focus on optimizing those specific pages or creating new content that matches those interests.
• See which keywords are driving traffic – After you’ve identified your most popular pages, take a look at your analytics data to see which keywords led visitors to those pages. This will tell you what people are searching for when they come to your site, so you can add that information to your keyword research list and target these topics in new content.

Create a social media presence

Start by creating a social media profile for your brand. Be sure to include keywords in your profile that are relevant to your business. Use social media to share fresh, original content. This content should be optimized for search engines using the appropriate keywords. Make sure your website is linked to your social media profiles. This will help users find your site more easily. Use social media to interact with potential and current customers. Respond to comments and questions in a timely manner. Use hashtags on social media to make it easier for users to find your content. Hashtags should be relevant to your business and industry.

Stay consistent

SEO is an ever-changing field, but one thing remains constant: the importance of consistency. No matter what new tactics you learn or what algorithm updates come down the line, if you want to be successful with SEO, you need to be consistent. Here are a few tips to help you stay on track and make sure your efforts pay off:

• Keep up with Google’s latest updates.
• Create a timeline and stay consistent in your posting schedule.
• Make sure you’re doing everything correctly
• Always research before publishing a piece of content – it’s important to know who your audience is before sharing your message
• Remember that it takes time and effort to see results from any changes – so don’t get discouraged
• Take some time out of each day to find sources that might be relevant to your niche and provide value; this will keep things fresh and engaging for readers and can provide a more targeted traffic source.
• Don’t stop learning

About the Author

Chase Morgan is an SEO and content-creating enthusiast and spends his time learning about the ins and outs of SEO implementation. Aside from writing about SEO, Chase also enjoys gardening and volunteering at the local shelter.