Ready to take on the task of optimizing your own website to help move your business up in the search results?
Take a good look at the keywords you are already using. A little keyword research will go a long way when it comes to finding terms people are actually searching for.
Up your online presence by improving the content on your website. Creating SEO-friendly text gives your website an advantage that other optimized sites don’t have.
Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals
Optimizing a website for the first time can seem a bit intimidating to someone who hasn’t done it before. With a little time and patience, you can optimize your web pages for organic search.
We offer a list of 5 basic steps you should do if you are considering SEO for your own website. This simple search engine optimization strategy should help improve your page rankings and drive new organic users to your web pages.
Step 1: Online Consumer Keyword Research
The biggest mistake people make when they first attempt to optimize their website is to target keywords and phrases they like or think people are searching for that are related to the services or products you offer. While this concept seems to make sense, it can hinder your results. Instead, you need to optimize the website for keywords that online visitors are searching for and this is why online consumer research needs to be done.
Popular Online Research Tools
Step 2: Speed Up Your Website
Website loading delays can lead to lower traffic from organic sources. Your site speed is a key component of usability and if your web pages load slowly, people won’t wait, they will leave and go to another website. You can improve your bounce rate and your ranking in Google search results by optimizing your website. Tactics include reducing image file sizes, switching to a faster hosting server, having an AMP version of the website and using a browser caching plugin.
Popular Website Testing Tools
Step 3: Check On-Page Content
Actual content on your website’s pages plays a major role in SEO and how it ranks in organic search results. Search engines take into account the readability of your content. The content written for your website needs to be easy to read and understand by your target audience. You’ll also want to format your content using SEO best practices – no keyword stuffing, include h1 and h2 for headings, add ALT tags to images.
Popular Content Testing Tools
Step 4: Write META Titles and Descriptions
It’s important to optimize each page on your website to have a unique META title and description. These two site elements are shown in search engine results and when written well and concisely, your web pages have a better chance of ranking in top positions for niche and long-tail keyword phrases. Each page title and description should be summarized to describe the content on the page within the character limits set for each field.
Popular WordPress SEO Plugins
Step 5: Track SEO Progress
Monitoring your SEO progress is essential to its success. Using tools we mention on this page, you can track your website’s performance and also gain insight into how you can continue to make improvements. Check your user stats, keyword performance reports and competitor rankings to see how the changes you made are doing.