Today we welcome Chris Gregory of DAGMAR Marketing as a guest author. Chris provides a rich understanding of SEO standards and best practices for your website.
Creating a website is essential in today’s digital market. You’ve invested effort and money to make it look good, but being attractive and user-friendly is not enough these days. It must also be visible. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) steps up and plays a critical role in driving traffic to your site. If you’re wondering if SEO is really necessary, ask yourself this: How often do you look past the first page of Google results? Never? Then you’ve got plenty of company because a majority of users answer the same way. Don’t get discouraged, though. This article breaks down what you should know to maximize your visibility and drive traffic to your site. No matter what industry you’re in, these will help boost your SEO. Keep reading for tips to make your site stand out to your customers and search engines too!
Do your research.
This seems obvious, but it is often overlooked. Use a tool like https://www.semrush.com/ or https://www.spyfu.com/ to gain insights on keywords and terms that your customers might search for. You can also use Google Keyword Planner although you’ll need to setup an AdWords account to access it.
Think mobile.
This trend cannot be ignored. The use of mobile devices has overtaken the desktop making this once nice-to-have feature a requirement. Make your site responsive because search engines are increasingly “rewarding” responsive, mobile-friendly sites.
Think fast.
Page speed goes hand-in-hand with mobile. It’s a huge factor in SEO ranking, plus slow loading sites lose half their visitors. These tools will help you figure out where you can improve:
- https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-us
- https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Clean it up.
It’s easy to put these things on the backburner, but they can really drag down your SEO performance. Remove all lorem ipsum placeholder text that might be leftover from developing the site. Delete unused demo pages because they can be crawled by search engines. Since the content isn’t relevant to your business, it will negatively impact your SEO.
The little stuff is sometimes the big stuff.
Put phone numbers in text to appeal to search engines and be mobile-friendly. Write editable meta titles and meta descriptions for every page. Update your site’s navigation as new content is added will benefit both users and search engines.
Links, links, links.
Yes, they are that important, but it’s not just quantity now. Your site needs a mix of both internal and external links from high-quality sources. Think about professional organizations you’re involved with, or community based websites like your local chamber of commerce, which provide you with relevant, authoritative links and can raise your SEO ranking.
Plan ahead.
You may not be ready to start a blog yet, but you should set it up anyway. Blogs are one of the most effective tools for SEO. Create the space for it now to save yourself the hassle later. Which brings us to the next tip…
Create quality content.
This cannot be stated enough. Google ranks sites based on content, but not just any content: well-researched, multimedia pieces are needed to attract readers. If your content is subpar, your site won’t rank for much. Make sure the content you post is the best of the best.
SEO is a popularity contest.
Look at the popularity signals for both www and non-www versions of your site. Though they look the same, to a search engine they are unique domains. Choose the most popular address as your official domain for search engines. This tool will tell you which version has a higher authority
Double trouble.
Block your staging site from search engines to dodge the problem from having two sites with duplicate content. You can use a robots.txt file, but some prefer to use no-index meta tags on every page to be certain.
There are many factors that can influence SEO, but this list covers the most essential. With a few changes, you can boost your site’s visibility and give yourself an edge over the competition. You’ve put the time into developing your site, now make certain your audience can find it.
Chris Gregory is the founder and a managing partner of DAGMAR Marketing, a local SEO company based in Jacksonville, Florida. The agency’s work was recently recognized in Search Engine Land’s international search marketing competition, garnering the Best Local SEO Initiative award.
