As a small business owner, it really helps to know how to promote your products and services. You may have heard of search engine optimization as one way of doing this. Done right, SEO can help attract new customers and grow your business and revenue. WPamplify offers these tips on how different SEO can be implemented onto your site.
Finding the best keywords for your industry
Knowing which keywords that not only relate to your industry but also are searched for by users, is critical for having any success in content marketing and search engine optimization. Doing this the right way can help determine how relevant your site is, and help bring the right visitors to your website.
Luckily, some of the best SEO tools are designed for this very purpose. The Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Wordstream’s Keyword Tool are both excellent, highly recommended, and most importantly, free to use.
These tools can help you also zero in on long tail keywords which are phrases that contain three words or more. They’re more specific than generic keywords and are often found at the bottom of the search results page.
But it’s important to not overuse keywords, even if they are the right ones. You want your content to sound natural, and native to your language. This helps you sound like an expert in your field. Keyword stuffing can make you sound repetitive, and potentially turn off customers.
On page SEO
Once you have keywords, then it’s a little easier to begin another part of SEO, which is focusing on on-page SEO.
One component of on-page SEO is sounding natural. As mentioned in the previous tip, the more natural you sound with your writing, the better you look as an expert in your industry.
You’ll also want to focus on a few elements that are directly related to your written content. These are extremely significant to search engine algorithms.
- Page title
- Meta description
- Header tags
The page title is arguably the most important element. This is what will stand out in bigger fonts when looking at the search results page. The page title is what describes the topic of every piece of content on your website.
The meta description is another element you should concern yourself with. On the search results page, this is a snippet of text that’s typically right below the page URL. This snippet is used to further describe what exactly your content is about.
Header tags are used within the written content to help organize it for your visitors. The H1 tag is the biggest in size and in importance. The H2 tag is slightly smaller and holds just a little less significant than the H1 tag. These tags get progressively smaller all the way down to H6.
Each of these elements should include one of your chosen keywords, in a way that doesn’t sound forced. This will help Google and other search engines know what your page is about.
Image Optimization
Another good SEO practice involves your images.
Adding images can make your content easier to read, support an argument, and create an emotional connection. But did you know that you can also optimize your images to help improve your SEO efforts?
It’s not as hard as it sounds. All you have to do is change the image filename and the “alt” attribute.
Search engines place a high value on the alt attributes of images, so it’s important to add text to this attribute that is relevant to not only the topic of your page but to the image itself.
The image filename should be modified as well, as this Q&A from Moz points out. If your content is about the beaches in Key West, the image filename shouldn’t be something that your smartphone camera generated. It should be, for example, key-west-beaches.jpg.
Building and Earning Backlinks
Backlinks are when one website links to another. There are several backlinks within the very content you’re reading right now.
Backlinks are important because they signal that one site trusts another. This means that your content is worth linking to, and can tell the search engines that your site is valuable.
Reputable sites that link to you will help build your backlink profile, which is one component used by search engines to determine your rank. Moz has created a fantastic beginners guide to building links.
Designing for Mobile
The number of users who access the web from their smartphones continue to rise. Not only that, but Google is now prioritizing fast-loading responsive websites in its search results now.
This means that if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, then you’re losing out.
If your users have to zoom in to view your site, or if it’s difficult to navigate while using a smartphone, then it’s time to get with your web designer to optimize your site.
There are a couple of free tools offered by Google to help you with this:
Let WPamplify Help With Your SEO Needs
WPamplify offers affordable search engine optimization solutions for small businesses. We can help you implement these tips and more so that your business gets noticed online. Contact us today to get started.
