Even if your website has a great link profile, an excellent PR campaign and fantastic outreach, it will not be able to secure the top spots in search engines unless you implement search engine optimization or SEO tactics. In simple terms, this is a combination of strategies designed to help websites in getting better rankings in search results of relevant keyword phrases. These rankings are a source of traffic to the website and can lead to greater sales and profits. The problem is that a number of businesses tend to get intimidated with search engine optimization because of the amount of information available. They are unable to fathom the concept, unless they hire an SEO consultant.
However, there are some easy things that every business can do without needing to go to the added expense of hiring a professional.
OnSite
SEO Basics
Some of the most important elements of SEO need to be implemented on the website itself. Most people hear that social media marketing, link building etc are needed for effective search engine optimization. A business needs to understand that these strategies will be useless if there is no onsite SEO. The elements that should be used for optimizing a website, especially the homepage are discussed here.
The Golden Rule
One thing to keep in mind when implementing onsiteor offsite search engine optimization is not to overdo it. People are tempted to shove a lot of keywords on their webpages, but this urge should be resisted as this tactic can get websites banned from search results altogether. Hence, as far as keyword phrases are concerned, every website should learn to keep it simple. There are numerous keyword tools available such as Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool that can be used for getting ideas about keywords, if you aren’t sure of what to use.
Title Tag
Search engines learn about the page through the title tag, which should not be any longer than 70 characters and should comprise of the brand name and keywords relating to that particular page.
Meta Description
Search engines are able to get a little more insight into the page through the meta description. It may be able to help a business in improving its keyword rankings. Therefore, the description should include the main keywords of the page and should be written for a human audience because it shows up in search results.
Internal Links
Linking your website to external websites isn’t the only way of link building; it should also be done internally. Search engines will be able to glean more information about a website when it is internally linked to other pages on the website with relevant content.
Header Tags
These tags are useful for dividing the content into sections and inform search engines about the content of each section. Separate tags should be used for the title and they should be used only once on a page. Subheadings on the pages can be mentioned in multiple header tags, which can be used several times. This doesn’t just help search engines, but also aids users in breaking up the content into easytoread
and digestible sections.
Image Name and ALT Tags
If images are used on the website, it is important to come up with good keywords for the ALT tag and image name. Relevant and effective keywords should be used as sometimes people also search images of a particular keyword and will be directed to the website.
Bolded Text
Don’t get crazy with this element of SEO. It can only be used occasionally for highlighting a selection of text that will attract the user’s attention. This can also be useful for search engines as it assists them in distinguishing keywords and other important information in the content of the webpage.
Content Marketing
Content development and marketing is great for search engine optimization and visitors. They will only stick around if there is interesting and useful content on the website and it will encourage search engines to put the pages of the website in the search index. Quality content is the key for pleasing search engines and visitors alike. This can include a variety of things such as industry articles, videos, blog posts, infographics, podcasts and How to guides and tutorials. It is a huge investment, but is worth the benefits it provides. Visitors share the content on social media networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, which can lead to even more visitors.
OffSite
Optimization
One of the most talked about SEO elements is link building. The primary goal of this task is to link the website with other websites. If getting top rankings is a popularity contest, then links are votes, which state that the website should be ranked high. Getting links that contain keyword anchor text will help you in securing better rankings for your keyword. There are lots of ways of getting links, but not all are good. There are three major link building techniques, which are listed below:
● Organic Links: These are the best kind, especially if they are on sites with high
authority, which are wellrecognized
and popular.
● White Hat: This refers to quality and good link building.
● Black Hat: Low quality and spammy link building is defined in black hat techniques. Generating organic links is the toughest task for businesses and doing the following activities can help them in achieving this goal:
● Writing blogs posts for major and popular industry blogs. There is an author box at the bottom or top of the page’s content where the link to the website is mentioned.
● Reach out to related businesses (not your competitors) to see if they want to link.
● Local search profiles and social media profiles should be created on popular platforms.
● Social media can be a powerful tool for businesses when they want to become viral.
● The website should be submitted to applicable industry directories and even advertisements on relevant websites can be bought. Avoid lowquality directories.
● Link worthy content such as infographics should be created. As long as these basics of SEO are understood, a website can be optimized to show up on top in search results of major search engines.
