What is an SEO strategy?
An SEO (search engine optimization) strategy or approach involves outlining and implementing plans designed to improve the search engine ranking of your website.
Even the most seasoned SEO experts will tell you that SEO is a complicated business. When we talk about the factors that impact your SEO rankings, there are too many to count. That is, if you want to make good use of your time.
An SEO strategy will look at the hundreds of variables that impact the site’s rankings and offer suggestions of improvement. Much of what dictates a good suggestion will depend on your business and what you’re looking to get out of your website.
For example, a site that is focussed on e-commerce will be targeting different goals than a site primarily for blogging. So, they’ll also need different SEO strategies.
In an effort to keep it simple, though – an effective SEO strategy will help you place better in search engine rankings (ever dreamed of being the number one search result on Google?) and achieve more organic traffic.
How do I improve my website’s SEO?
There are a number of ways you can improve your site’s SEO – from improving user experience to using pay-per-click advertisement. The method you use will depend on what you want to get out of it.
Let’s cover the basics…
Improve User Experience
A search engine’s objective is to find the best results to answer a user’s query. In other words, a search engine exists for the user (your prospective customer). As such, any search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) will look for the highest quality sites to recommend to their users.
Google even suggests that when optimising your site, you should consider the search engine itself a user.
So, how do you ensure that your website is recommended?
In truth, there’s a vast number of ways a search engine will determine whether your site is high quality or poor quality. You can work on how quick your site takes to load, break up your content with header tags, optimize your site for user experience, keep the customer journey predictable and simple – and these are just the basics.
Keep an eye on your Metadata
Each page of your website will contain something called ‘metadata’. What metadata does is provide information about the contents of your page to the search engine, ensuring that it has the basic information it needs immediately.
If your site was designed by a web design company, then optimized metadata is usually included in the design package. However, it’s still important to keep this metadata up to date as your site goes through changes.
There are a few types of meta data to keep an eye on: Title Metadata, Description Metadata, and Keyword Metadata.
Title metadata will inform how the page titles are displayed in the browser window and within search engines. This makes it some of the most important metadata on your site.
Description metadata provides an appealing description of what the page is about, with the goal of attracting users to the site. The ideal meta description will be no longer than two full sentences long.
Of the three types, Keyword metadata is the least used by search engines to determine SEO rankings, however as you should always know what keywords you are targeting, it won’t ever hurt to add them.
Improve and Update your content
Content that is written for SEO purposes will perform better – so ensuring that each page of your site is to a high standard and targets the keywords you wish to aim for is essential.
Likewise, ensuring that your content is up to date at all times will help alert search engines to the fact your site is constantly monitored, meaning that information should be new and relevant.
For example, including an active news or blog section within a website provides an easy way to ensure your website posts regular high-quality content. Additionally, it provides more opportunity to target the keywords your website is hoping to rank highly on. Regularly reviewing blog posts and news articles on your site to keep them on-topic and relevant will also assist in this.
Earn backlinks
A backlink is essentially an external link from one site to another. These are especially valuable for SEO purposes because they offer a degree of accreditation to the site that is linked to. If search engines see that a particular website is being linked to a lot, they can come to the conclusion that this site is reputable, and worth being linked to. As such, they will then be more likely to suggest it to individuals using the search engine.
So, how do you make this work for your website?
This requires some input from you to build content that is worth linking to, as well as a network that wants to link to you. It is beneficial to earn backlinks from high-authority sites as these will signify that your site may also be of such caliber. On the other hand, association with low-authority sites may cause your site to lose authority.
What are the first steps?
The improvements above are only the beginning. There are a number of methods to help you improve your SEO. The best way to figure out which methods you need to target most in relation to your desired industry is through an SEO audit.
An SEO audit involves a highly in-depth look at how your site is performing on search engines, such as Google or Bing. For best results, you should consider seeking an SEO website specialist for advice.
This type of audit will provide you with an idea on where you are ranking for your chosen keywords (anything beyond page one should be aiming higher) and what your domain authority is.
An expert will then be able to highlight areas on your site that would benefit from improvement. From there, you can implement your SEO strategy and work to boost your search engine presence.
Contact KMK Web Design HERE for help with your SEO audit.
